iMig 140E First Impressions

[Slartybartfa]

I bought a Power iMIG 140E in November. At the time Amazon was having a screaming deal, and then, if you sign up for their credit card, you take another $40 off. It turned out to be about $300 delivered. Couldn't pass that up.

Welder arrived in good condition, but sat in box until I got a "round toit." Just the other day, 12/26, I needed to make some brackets out of 3/16" hot rolled steel for hanging a sliding barn door. I looked at my PowerPro 256, and I looked at the unopened box from Everlast. Then I looked at the 240V/50A plug on the wall behind the lathe, which was behind some boxes of Christmas decorations and thought I really didn't want to wrestle with all that. So I unboxed the iMIG 140, connected it up to my argon/CO2 tank, transferred the remains of a roll of crappy HF 0.030 wire from my old Campbell-Hausfeld 120V/70A welder, which I converted to MIG, and tried a couple of beads on a scrap of 1/4" plate. Got some irregular arc, some BBs, so I adjusted the voltage and the gas and the weld settled down. So I went ahead with the brackets.

I've got to say, that welder does a nice job. The thing has absolutely no problem welding 3/16" hot rolled steel. It wasn't even maxxed out. Just took my time and kept weaving back and forth, tracing the edge of the puddle and it laid a nice bead. The 5 second delay before gas shut off is a nice touch, too. And I really like not having the wire hot until I squeeze the trigger. The bead looked just like that from a 240V welder. Was connected directly to a 20A wall plug in my groj. No issues with lack of power.

I had heard it said that the heat you get out of an inverter welder is more than for a similar sized transformer welder, but I had no idea the difference was that great. I do mostly projects involving 11ga or 16 ga tubing. Sometimes larger, but I have the PP256 for that. The iMIG 140E really makes having another 240V welder unnecessary for me.

[performance]

That's how I feel about it too. I wouldn't want to jump on anything more than 1/4" with it regularly, but it's got some power.

[Slartybartfa]

Spent some quality time with the welder yesterday. I needed to make three 20' ladder sections out of 1 1/2" 16 ga. square tubing to hang lights from in my new shop. I dialed in the voltage and wire feed speed until it sounded right and made some test welds, and spent the rest of the day behind the green glass. Even with the tail end of a roll of 0.030" cruddy HF wire, it produced good clean welds. Very smooth arc, reliable wire feeding and easy to move around the shop.

Then had to weld some brackets out of 3/16" hot roll. Turned voltage and wire feed up, tacked it together and then welded several more fillets. Easy as can be. Welds penetrated nicely and looked great.

Very impressed that this 120V welder has so much power.

[everlastsupport]

Very impressed that this 120V welder has so much power.

What amp breaker were you using?

[DaveO]

I used my IMIG on 110v to gin up brackets for a little trailer (drags behind a lawn tractor), also on 3/16". It's great to be able to plug in where you need to, design and build on the fly, and get the good results you mention.

[Slartybartfa]

What amp breaker were you using?

Just the standard household 20A breaker on the branch circuit that feeds the groj as built in 1962. Nothing special. But then, I've never maxxed the voltage control, so who knows how close to 20A I was getting. Line voltage here is right around 121 volts.

[johnson697]

i just got my 140 e and where i work at they have a small hobart biggest 1 you can get to run on 110,they paid 500.00 for it and this 140e kicks its ### even the other welders where very impressed with it.trying to convince them into getting a few of the 255 tig.