Hobart Handler 140 MIG Welder 115V (500559 ) - Durable, Portable Wire Feed Welder Machine - Flux Core Welding Machine with Dual-Gauge Regulator - MIG Welding Machine Welds Up To 1/4 in. Mild Steel

You know, I open a lot of foreign made junk. From simple brass fittings, to complex electrical components like TVs. You learn to recognize what is junk and what is not. For example; if you got to Lowes, Home Depot, Menards or other similar box stores and look at their plumbing supplies, you will see an awful lot of junk. How can you get a brass fitting 'wrong'? If it's made of brass, it should be good for certain applications, right? No... not right. Even among simple things like brass fittings, you can see a huge disparity between what you buy at Lowes or WallMart, vs what you might buy at a plumbing supply store. This welder is JUST LIKE THAT. When comparing this welder to 'similar' welders at the local box stores, the differences start to become clear as soon as you open the box. This Hobart welder is much more solidly constructed that a 'similar' (name brand) welder that I recently purchased at one of the box stores, in every respect. The packaging was solid two-layer thick cardboard, stapled together. Not the simple, single layered junk my (name brand) came in. The outside shell is made of stronger, thicker steel, compared to the thinner outside shell of the (name brand). The wire feed assembly is all metal, compared to mostly plastic components of my (name brand). The Hobart came with a 10' mig gun and a 10' clamp, where the (name brand) came with a 6' and 10' clamp cable. Every component of the Hobart was just sturdier than the (name brand). This was most apparent ... well ... everywhere, really. The gas regulator was MUCH nicer than the one that came with the (name brand). Actually, the regulator was Miller branded, which explains my previous statement. The manual was very well done. Everything about the 'fit and finish' of this machine was solid; From the mig gun to the outer shell of the unit, every component seemed to be top-notch. Hobart/Miller did not spare pennies to put this together. Even the packaging was very well done, and obviously not sacrificed to save a buck. I was really concerned about the regulator... The (name brand) welder I purchased came with a ...sub-standard... regulator, but this Hobart shipped with a much higher quality regulator. I was impressed by much more than the 'Miller' brand on the brass. It was just a far superior product than what I had seen before. All of that said, there were a few things I wasn't so happy with. Namely; The Hobart came with a 'sample' spool of wire. Not so bad since I already had wire, but disappointing. The adjustment for the wire spool required a wrench, but should not have. A wing nut would have been preferable. When assembling the Hobart, you will need both a 10mm wrench, and a 1/2" wrench. Pick a standard and stick with it. But it all really comes down to the weld... and here the Hobart really shined. I don't know if it's because the the clamp on the Hobart was superior, or the tip was better designed, or ... maybe it was just me being happier with the apparently better equipment and so doing a better job, but the Hobart was easier to work with. Whether pushing or pulling my beads, the Hobart just seemed easier to work with than my (name brand) welder. All in all, if I were to recommend a MIG welder for 'the hobbyist', or ... more like myself, the average user; it would be this welder. It has so far been fabulous.

SUMMARY This is an excellent welder for any home DIY person. I use mine for building and modifying my BBQ smokers and custom steel/wood furniture designs and have had it about 1.5 years. Once you have the ability to 'fuse' metal pieces together there are a wealth uses that seem to come up. From the moment you open the box, the welder is clearly well made and comes with all the necessary accessories to hook up a gas tank and use larger wire spools. You cannot go wrong with this welder assuming it has the power you need for the metal thicknesses you want. 1/4" max steel is fairly heavy duty and should be good for a majority of hobbyist type people and I imagine it is good enough for most commercial light duty. You aren’t going to be welding structural steel shapes, but that was never the intent of this model. The dual voltage on the next model up gets you more power range, but to use it, and any of the more powerful models, you’ll need a 'special' 220v outlet (similar to electric clothes dryers) where you intend to weld. Factor that in to your selection. ACCESSORIES Go ahead and order a large spool of non-flux core (important, see below) wire and weld helmet with auto-darkening. If you have an older style helmet, the auto-darkening is still worth every penny of the upgrade. You will also need a good set of gloves, but I highly recommend trying these on at your local weld supply house. You want the best fitting glove you can find, which you must try on to find. I recommend the thinner leather of pigskin gloves. This material can’t tolerate as much heat (don’t rest your gloved hand for very long on a just completed weld), but will offer much more control and tactile feedback. Finding the correct fit makes your control even better. It is worth your time and any extra expense to try these on and support your local store. You’ll also want a cart for your welder and tank. There are a bunch of these on amazon, available at local places (northern tool, etc), or you could build your own as a first welding project. It puts your welder up higher for easy adjustments and is important for safety with the gas tank. GAS TANK You need to IMMEDIATELY go get a tank of weld gas for your setup. Actually, go ahead and do this while waiting for Amazon to speedily deliver your welder. I am pretty sure they cannot sell a tank to you online for various regulatory/shipping reasons, it definitely cannot be shipped full. This is actually a good thing, because 95% of gas supply places do not want to fill your tank, they prefer to swap them out with already filled ones. If you were to find a nice shiny new tank, you’re going to have a harder time finding place to fill it so that you can keep it and not be swapped for a used filled one. There are typically several welding/gas supply places in any city, and they’ll have other accessories to look at (gloves for example, see above). I got a 40 cubic foot tank, which isn't too bulky at about 20 inches tall, and it has a pretty good life span between fillings. If you plan on welding every weekend (or more) get a bigger one. There will be a larger initial cost the first time to 'buy' the tank, then each subsequent time will be a smaller filling/swap charge. WELDING So why do you need to immediately get a tank and a spool of regular wire? Well simply put flux core wire welding without gas is horrible. It is MUCH harder to do nice welds with and if you haven’t welded before I cannot imagine trying to learn on flux core. I learned to weld back in college on a Miller welder (the blue ones) with a gas setup and got pretty good at it. Fast forward a decade, I had enough potential projects to warrant my own welder and got this one. Being impatient, I initially tried to use the flux-core wire the welder came with and literally thought I completely forgot how to weld. Flux core wire spatters everywhere, makes it very hard not to blow through thinner metals, and is just generally a horrible experience. Flux core wire has to be fed faster because it isn’t all metal (obviously) and I think this leads to less control. This is apparently not a wire type/welder brand/model thing either. Once I got regular wire and a tank with weld gas, my welding skills ‘magically’ returned to normal. I was able to lay down well controlled, perfectly beaded lines. I could even ‘fill-in’ gaps or holes by building up filler metal with the improved control. The wire feed on the Hobart is smooth and consistent. There seems to be enough granularity in the power and feed settings for my needs. I haven’t tried welding aluminum, but will be trying stainless steel soon. BOTTOM LINE I am very happy with the Hobart welder and believe you would be to. It is a good value for what seems to be a quality product. If you have never welded and want to learn, this model is a good place to start and you will likely never need anything else. I strongly considered the Hobart dual voltage model, but ultimately the added cost wasn’t worth the upgrade to weld 3/8 inch thick material. I haven’t needed it yet, and may not ever. The next model down, the 130, doesn’t come with the gas regulator (its an added accessory) and I believe does not have the cast aluminum wire drive system that is in the 140. These are both significant upgrades. This model is the 'sweet spot' in the line up for a home user.

I bought this welder a year ago as an upgrade to my HF junk flux box. I spent a month researching models in the 130amp and above range due to buying an old rat rod project and want something that would weld 1/8 plate all day with no problems and the occasional 1/4" flat stock, I settled for a 190amp Clark box due to it being 240v and $150 less, instead of buying this welder, WHAT A MISTAKE!!! it didn't work out of the box and had to fight to get my money back! Long story short the second time around I decided to go with the handler 140 since I use Hobart at work even despite it only being 120v. All I can say is I have been heavily using this welder for over a year now with ZERO!! issues!! this welder is the best 120v machine I have ever used it burns 1/4" 100% no problem which is unheard of in the 120v category, (definitely use 10g wire and 30a circuit for power feed) My friend who is a professional welder tested mine out and said he had never used a 120v machine that laid out a better bead and perfect penetration! he said after trying mine he is buying one for home! I used the provided flux wire to build a cart for it which worked great other than the mess you get with flux core wire, so I bought a gas cylinder and set it up with a 11lb .030 mig wire spool to do the welding I need on my rat rod project,what a difference! super clean welds when using with 75/25 co2/argon mix!! This welder is super under priced for the quality you get right out of the box! very glad with my purchase and look forward to many more years of service from this welder. do your self a favor don't waste your money on something else, buy this machine!

Welders are sometimes hard for hobyists to justify buying because of limited use. But if you have to weld to fix something, like any other project, you have to have the tool for the job or take it out to the welding shop and pay big bucks. That's when the Hobart 140 shines. This is the best most versatile welder I have ever used. It made my welds look professionally done in about 10 minutes of practice with the settings. You get 5 heat settings, and infinite wire feed. The wire feed and gas setup is a snap, the built in charts and data is handy. Just flip up the side and there it is. No hunting the manual. It even comes with a metal guage for setting the initial numbers. For years I used a 90 amp flux core welder from Harbor Freight. It welded, but we're talking ugly. Flux core spatters and spits. I shopped around, read all the reviews and decided to go with Hobart. It's made by Miller, and that is about as good as it gets in welding. After reading the reviews it came down to the Hobart 130 or the Hobart 140. As I looked into the upgrades from the 130 to the 140 it seemed to me that the extra hundred twenty bucks was going to be worth it on the long haul. You'll be glad you get the 140! The 140 has improved wire feed. That mechanism is everything in welding. A cheapo wire feeder will irk your soul while you're trying to get that weld bead right. It has a better ground clamp of steel vs flimsy copper, quality brass regulator for gas. The wire feed mechanism sets quickly, disengages easily to test the gas or gun. The gun on the 140 is really well built. Plus the Amazon version of the Hobart Handler 140 was $484 as upposed to the $550 or so other dealers were going. With free shipping and no tax it was a no brainer. Go Amazon! I set it up with C25 (argon co2 mix) gas and mounted it on a harbor freight 100# welding cart that holds all my stuff ready. The gas set up was easy, and really smothes out your bead. My C25 tank was $139 filled at Rural King Supply. The last thing to say is Hobarts hold their value really well. Take care of it, and you won't lose much when or if it comes to selling the unit.

Awesome welder works very well

Although I wish I could set voltage and wire speed more accurately, this machine is reliable and welds very well. For beginners looking for an easy to use, reliable welder, look no further.

I just got this welder, haven't had much of a chance to use it, but immediately had an issue setting it up. the door was completely stuck. turns out this was due to some damage during shipping. the bottom tray if you want to call it that had bent up slightly and was jamming the latch. The box looked A-OK, and there was tons of cardboard packaging reinforcing every side of the box so I was rather confused. I managed to straighten it enough for the door to open and close reasonably well without using anything that would have damaged the finish, then got it all assembled and ready to weld, and didn't have enough time to get any of my projects together to try it out. I included some pictures so you can see how insignificant the bend is (and how dirty my pants are). you might be able to notice the crease in the last one right near the bigger bolts in the center of the unit. I've welded with my brothers older (was purchased 15+ years ago) Lincoln mig, and it works very well, I'm hoping this welder will do as much for me as the lincoln has done for him. I'm going to try the fluxcore first then get a mig bottle if its not up to my expectations, but from the other reviews I believe I'll be pleased. I'll likely update this review tomorrow or at least this week with my success or thoughts. UPDATE 5/1/2017: I've been welding a little here and there, not enough to get a good feel for the welder until today. Its great. By far the best welder I've ever used. The fluxcore wire is ok, I'll switch to solid wire later on but it runs a nice bead with the innershield. I welded up a lower unit stand (I'm a boat mechanic) out of some 1 inch box section, this thing is smooooth. Very happy, just wish it hadn't had that damage when I first got it, that's still a bummer.

Gonna give this five stars because I like it in spite of two significant problems I've had and solved: 1. The unit is shipped in a pretty retail box like you'd find if you bought it at a retail store. Pictures printed on it of what's inside and enough cardboard to protect it from scratches and keep the parts together but no padding beyond one or two layers of single-ply corregated. This same box is not enough for shipping 65lbs of metal across the country or the county and the first unit arrived with body panels bent or displaced and some broken plastic in the chassis. I shipped it back and they Fed-Ex'd another one to me. Good-bye profit. 2. I noticed that the grooves in the metal wire feed drive didn't align with the wire and after a while the wire would work out of the groove and stop feeding. They diagnosed this as a warranty problem and yada, yada, I told them I would prefer to return the second unit rather than take time off from work and drive 60 miles round-trip to a warranty repair center. The solution: Hobart shipped a new feed motor and spindle to me and I replaced it myself in about an hour. The new unit fixed the mis-alignemnt mostly, but there's got to be a better way to get that wire aligned with the slots... Other than those two things, anything else bad that has happened is due to my inexperience and/or incompetence in the art of welding metals together. On the plus side, read the other reviews from people who like the welder and gave it five stars and pretend I wrote the same thing here: .

Es facil de usar y tiene buena precision, su graduacion es exacta y su control de mano bastante responsivo.

Solid machine. Welds nice. I have not tried 1/4” steel yet but works excellent on body panels. Quick shipping

Usé estas ruedas para un Carrito de soldar, para piso áspero e irregular, me quedó muy fuerte y estable.

how can you go wrong with a hobart, made by miller .

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