I am going to be saving up to get my hands on a welder.

Any suggestions, experiences, stories, whatever that might help me decide on my first welder.

I am considering a Millermatic 140 or 180 right now.

Hi apache
This is my first post, I hope I can be of help. In my humble opinion you need to choose a welder based on what you need it to do in the future as well as what you need it for now. There are 4 main choices and each have thier own distinct advantages. I am not a qualified weldor but I have a lot of experience usinfg each type of welder in my workshop. The most basic type is the stick welder , they come in ac and dc formats, great for steel 2mm and up and rods can be bought to do stainless and cast iron. The kit is basic but there is a lot of skill in getting any weld done consitently well! I think that 140amp + stick welder ( I quite like the dc ones) will do fine for most hobby work. More involved and depending where you live more difficult to get and keep is an oxy-actylene set up. These are so versatile! You can cut and weld steel, braze brass and copper heat seized parts till they seperate (or melt). storage of the bottles (at least in England) is highly regulated and getting them re-filled can be expensive as can the rental on the bottles if you are not able to purchase them. Moving swiftly on now, there is the tig welder. There seems to be ..no more space for me to go on and on...wait a moment...

Hi again
Mmm, tig welders that come as ac/dc units or just dc units. Older units had hf settings which got replaced by square-wave ac units. Ac capable units are expensive but they can weld aluminium. Dc tigs are great for just about everything else. You will need to have a bottle of shielding gas and I use argon as it allows me to weld a range of metals other than steel. The ac function on my welder is kaput but it sure does a lovely job on the dc setting! Just no aluminium:(. If you will need to weld aluminium in the future, then a 200+amp square wave tig will do that and a whole lot more! A new one will empty your wallet pretty thoroughly too! Last but not least is a mig welder. These are toted to be super easy to use and if you believe the adverts will weld two tin cans together.....well not in my experience. Really good machines for high speed, high volume welding, they can ( at a stretch) weld aluminium but unless you have a top of the range unit and lots of clean material to weld (like Kawasaki or Honda) then the welds will not compare with those made with a tig. That is my experience, I hope other members will correct me if my opinion is wrong!

I was talking to the welding guy at the machine shop at my college. he told me to get a mig. and then they got one of those millermatic things and he said it was great.
are the spool guns for doing aluminum worth anything?

oh and there are minimal regulations on the gas cylinders here. but they are like $150 to get them filled and about $250-300 for a regulator.

my family uses a gas dryer so i have an open 230V outlet so i was leaning toward the millermatic 180.

tig is a bit out of the capacity of my wallet. the 180 with gas, regulator, and some supplies and a good auto darking helmet are gonna take out my credit card.

then there are these things:
http://longevity-inc.com/product_details.php?id=33

I'd say buy the best you can afford. maybe look at a second-hand welder and bring a friend who knows what he/she is looking at. I really can not personally recommend a mig as a first welder but it does depend what you want to do with it. Migs are great for some things but I dont think they are as versatile as any of the other three options I mentioned. You only really need an auto darkening helmet if you have a tig. Most of the profesional shops here still rely on an old style helmet and a controlled nod! Self darkening helmets are great (i have a miller) but I still use my other two types a lot. Good luck

That longevity unit looks just the ticket. Very versatile and very cheap. Most certainly Chinese but with a 3 year warranty you can't go too far wrong! If you intend to use the plasma feature be sure to understand that you need a compressor that can deliver the volume ie; 5hp which will be big enough to give the required CFM. Remember to use a moisture filter too or your cutting tips won't last long:)

I went to Airgas yesterday and got prices on the millermatics w/ autoset.
the 180 is about $1200 with cart and Ar/CO2 mix cylinder and about adding a spool gun and cylinder of pure Ar is about $350. The auto darkening helmets are about $200-300. and the normal ones are about $50.

I also found a company that rents welders next door to Airgas.

The only concern I have about getting one of those Longevity units is the lack of local support and that the stuff that is made in China sometimes lacks adequate EMI suppression, which is important to me as have several thousand dollars worth of electronics test equipment on the electrical service as the welder will going.

Do the Millers have EMI suppression on them?

Sadly I am the "friend" that most people I know come to for tool related things so my friend based secondhand market is nil. I haven't looked at used machines too much to be honest.