Any welders on here?

Enjoy the experience of spatter fizzing in your ear just before the pain kicks in.

Tig with a foot pedal for the zen like win.

get a mig. much easier to weld with.
But i like a foot pedal

I've got a Clarke 135 Mig.
It works well with gas. I had a flux core mig before that which was pretty horrible for spatter.

Yeah, MIG is what you want for general purpose stuff.

MMA is pants for any material under a couple mm thickness.

Take your time, practice on reasonably thick (2-3mm?), prep carefully and avoid gasless MIG!

Welding tips and tricks on YouTube is pretty good for advice, and I'm sure there are plenty of others too...

If you're getting a stick (MMA) set, then it may well also be able to do scratch start TIG welding, which is tricky but useful & fun.

Writing as an engineering teacher, occasionally welding, with ambitions to find the time to make my own frame!

You can teach yourself MIG from YouTube but if you're doing MMA on anything thin it'll be a steep learning curve. I did city and guilds L1 a few years after I taught myself both, as work out me on it, passed on the first day. Still had to sit there for the rest of the week but the teacher was actually pretty good and taught me a few things and let me have a play on an Ali Tig setup.

Tldr - if you're serious about getting good at MMA, get some tuition at night school.

What’s your budget and what supply have you got ?
13amp. 16 amp , 32 amp.
Some decent multi discipline units out there , but quite spendy if you want something decent

I started with a cheap stick welder and it was horrible to try to get anything like a neat or consistant weld.
I got a cheap (Clarke I think) MIG and it was so much better.
When the free spool of gas-less wire ran out I hooked up a gas bottle and it was another big step forward.

If I could start again I think I would jump straight to MIG, use up the free spool learning to get the basics and then quickly get a gas bottle.

I also have a TIG welder which I swapped for a painting butI haven't had a chance/been brave enough to try that yet. I think I will get a bit of instruction from the local weld supplier rather than risk getting it badly wrong from the start.

Have successfully welded art sculptures like dragons as well as the suspension on one side of my truck.

I 'taught myself to weld' when I needed a trailer mounted antenna mast and found they cost 6 grand. Like others started with stick and practised with offcuts from the stock supplier.

When I needed something made properly I nipped down to a local fabricator who was a really friendly, young and enthusiastic lad and he basically prepared the steel and supervised me in doing the welding myself using his MIG kit and I learned loads in a few hours. He also let me try TIG which was just magical, really hard but loads of fun.

I immediately bought a synergic MIG, a polish version of an expensive machine, and a reconditoned argon cylinder, and cracked on with the trailer. I could follow the order I'd done the welds based on the improving quality of them and also tell which ones I'd done when it was a bit windy. Ideally I'd have welded inside but space, and an incident in which the mop caught fire made that a non starter. I also tuned a new tarmac drive orange with all the grinding dust going rusty on it.

The trailer turned out functional and strong, but ultimately all I'd done was learn to control the arc fairly well, being synergic the machine calculated its own settings based on the weld profile and thickness I'd selected so I learned nothing about what was actually happening. If I had to use a manual machine now I'd have no idea.

Still the most satisfying and fun project I've done and I wish I had more stuff to build (and a big workshop and plenty of time)

Have a look at R-Tech for welders and equipment. Good for the money and the last time I dealt with them, good customer service too.

Don't bother with MMA, a MIG is more versatile. Most TIG sets with do MMA too.

If you do go MIG and get a gas/gassless unit, ensure you set the polarity as per usage (gas/gasless).

You can get large(r) "rent free" gas bottles from motor factors.

Whatever you end up with nip down the scrappy and get some bits of 1/4 plate the practice on. I used to do a lot of tig and stick many years ago but never got on with mig for some reason. Tig was great for all manner of things but no idea costs but mig would probably be a good all rounder to start with.

If you want to do useful stuff with relatively little learning time, get a MIG and a rent-free CO2/argon mix cylinder from Hobbyweld.

If you want a hobby to put more time into and really learn a skill, and/or do more delicate stuff go TIG.

Second doing a night class if you can find a convenient one. I found it well worth it for a) some time set aside for learning and practice, and b) as much clean plate as I could weld without having to mess around prepping it.

i have 'learnt' to weld on my VW old bay window van.

if you want/need to weld to thin metal get something that you can turn down low enough!

Welding new clean metal is relatively easy to get the nice fizzle sound and a decent looking weld. dont get cocky though as welding to old metal upside down under a van with limited access to get it properly clean and properly cut back and limited access ot teh bit you are welding is much much much more tricky!

the more you do the more you learn about settings and tricks. I`m much more confident now than when i started by welding my engine mount back to teh chassis (it hasnt fallen off yet!).

i havent managed 'fish scale welds' ever. i have managed some decent welds though there is alot of crap sometimes - usually a result of lazyness or lack of access. but thats what the grinder is for haha!

If you're running 2mm rods in stick/MMA then you don't need 200A - you'll be more likely running them around 65A or so from memory. 2mm is very bottom end though. I've done a load of 1.5mm wall box and it's a pia with stick. 2.5mm or 3.2mm rods are where you want to be with equivalent (or thicker) material.

Depends what you want to weld. Thin stuff, car bodywork etc then forget stick. If you want simple, can use outside (no shield gas to get blown away), heavier stuff then MMA is easy to pick up with a bit of practice. General view is burn a box of rods on scrap and you'll be getting there.

MIG welding forum is a good place to start for all types of welding advice but I'd be happy to show you what I can if you're anywhere near Sheffield / Chesterfield...