Eastwood MIG Welder 175 Amp With Spool Gun, Cart & Helmet Kit

Eastwood MIG Welder 175 Amp With Spool Gun, Cart & Helmet Kit

Product Review (submitted on February 3, 2013):

I was looking for a good GMAW setup for my home garage, but didn't want to spend nearly $1000 on a unit I would only use occasionally. The product is packaged excellently and it arrived in perfect shape, assembly was easy, and I had the cart and welder assembled and ready to weld in a couple of hours.
The base settings for material etc are close, but with a little adjustment you can really dial this thing in.very well with its infinitely adjustable potentiometer style knobs. So far I have built a stainless turbo manifold using SCH.30 pipe and I am currently using the Spool Gun to build an intake manifold for my project car. They both perform flawlessly and make excellent welds.

My only complaint is a couple of design hiccups: 1. The door on the unit and the cart want to occupy the same space. This is not a big deal, because all I have to do is tilt the unit back a little to open the door.
2. Bigger bottles on the cart interfere with having a bottle on the back thanks to the position of the hose inlet on the back, but I solved this with a 90 degree fitting.
3. A couple of the plastic parts could be made a little more robust, in my opinion, but as long as you aren't an ape with the machine it should hold up fine. All of the internal parts though are sufficiently sturdy so there should be no problems there.

IMHO, for the money you definitely cannot go wrong with this unit. It easily compares to the previous Miller welder I had in terms of quality, which was a a Miller 135. As far as long term durability goes only time will tell, but I have never been let down by anything I have bought from Eastwood thus far, so my confidence is high that this thing can and will deliver years of service.