[CarolinaCrawler]

I've been in the fabrication field for years. I worked for my family business up till about 2 years ago. One thing neat about working for family was I had free reign of the shop after hours. My new job isn't quite like that so I've been borrowing welders and shop space from friends to do my offroad projects.

I've finely got a shop built after 2 long years, so now I'm starting to buy tools. I know that I want two welders, one small 110v and a second large 220v. I'm going to get the little one first because that's all the budget allows right now. The big one will fallow in a year or so. I was just going to get a 140 handler, but I came across the trek 180. It has a lot of things I like about it. I like the fact that its portable of corse, but I also like that its a 180 amp welder that only pulls 12.5a at the plug. This would work great at the trail or the campground, but I also do some fence and gate work. My main question is would it be a good shop welder also. I'm not a fan of the duty cycle, but its a little better than the handler. Im also not real excited about the lack of ability to run larger spools of wire. I would probably run .030 solid wire with C25 at the shop with a quick disconnect and just run .035 flux away from the shop.

So I guess the main question is would it work well for a shop welder 70% of the time? Is it worth the money to get over the handler?

[weldin mike 27]

Hey,

Welcome to the forum, glad to have you.

Jody, the guru behind all this has made a number of videos using a Hobart 210 MVP. It seems a handy thing, and has the capabilities to use both volyages. I have no idea about price though.

http://www.weldingtipsandtricks.com/hob ... 10mvp.html

Mick,

[Mike]

Welcome to the forum.

[echosixmike]

Jody did test the Trek 180, one of his earlier videos. Not sure about "shop" use, but 180 amp is pretty decent output for most light fab work, plenty for .120 wall DOM cage and such. S/F.....Ken M

[AKweldshop]

http://www.weldingtipsandtricks.com/hob ... k-180.html