Very nice , remember you got it - seems to have done very well. Iv done a lot of car body welding and going down to 0.6mm wire is definitely worth while if the welders going to be used on car body exclusively 😁
Just about to buy my 1st r tech 180 , totally new to welding but what I've just watched has answered all my thoughts/ questions , going to see if you have more videos as I want to know techniques now , ie patterns and hand angle etc . Great video 👏👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼
I bought one of these just over a year ago, and I've used it daily since then. around 6 months ago, there was a nasty pop when firing it up for the first go of the day, I phoned R-tech and there was a delivery guy at my door 4 hours later to pick it up, I had the machine back with me 3 days later (with a new main-board) so i'm very impressed with the customer service. although obviously, I'd rather it not go pop in the first place! It's got a really nice wire-feeder, which is the most important thing for a mig welder, and something that so many other chinese machines get badly wrong. It's very simple, but gets the basics right. It's also a pretty good stick welder, very smooth and easy to get along with, with enough power to run 3.2mm rods nice and hot, although 4mm are a bit of a stretch for this little machine, you can tell it isn't thrilled to be pulling those kinds of amps, but if you're running bigger rods, you should be using a bigger welder anyway! 4.5-5 stars from me!
grinding dust full of iron particles lands on the PCBs and shorts out vital electronics - you must blow out the innards on a regular basis to keep these things alive
@@mattsan70 that was the first thing I thought of too, but the board was clean as a whistle (and conformally coated to mitigate that risk) I work with electronics routinely, so my first inclination was to pop the lid off and have a look, the manual even recommends cleaning ghe innards with the lid off so no worries about voiding the (excellent) warranty. according to the technician I spoke to at r-tech, it's not unusual to have an out-of-spec IGBT go pop after a bit of a thrashing, and the day previously had been a long hot day of 6mm plate! Like I said, as long as you don't run it hard, it'll be fine, but don't expect it to last at full-chat even if you take maximum duty-cycles into account, a 180A welder this ain't! but it sure beats lugging my big one around!
Cheers john, I watched your channel and bought one from R-Tech, now I've learnt on it and so far produced a set of 5m gates, a set of pallet forks, a rear push blade and a 3 point trailer hitch. I've also repaired a couple of digger buckets and the machine has been no problems (kiss of death) however I did burn out a torch! great channel and honest reviews.
John excellent video brought back lots of memories welding. I'm considering buying a similar unit here downunder but 185 multi mig gassless/gas, tig, mma my 1970's mma 180 has sen a lot of work time to upgrade
I really want a welder, but since its 40 years ago since I sold my rally car, ive nowt to weld. Back then we needed one after every rally. Oh well. Love your honesty John.
I had the 250 r-tech mig welder but I didn't like the spatter using argon/co2, so I sold it and bought a warrior mig 250, which is by far the better machine. I like being able to play around with inductance, ideal for thin material and less spatter. They are a decent welding machine and have good after sales service but for a top end mig I would highly recommend a warrior machine as they are on the same level as Fronius.
Great review, looking to get into welding properly now I can afford a decent welder these days and this is the one that seemed to be ticking my boxes. I knew this one was the one as I’m also a northern John, if it works for you it will work for me 😂 in all seriousness thanks for the very informative video
Best Video I've seen, explained very well indeed. However, Could you please explain a little more, in regard to knowing to adjust the feed or the voltage to get the result you want? or is that simply a little trial and error??? TYIA
Hi John, This is a question on a unrelated topic. A while ago you set up a diesel heating in the workshop from Banggood. Has it lasted and is it worth the effort to fit chimney ventilation etc,
I like it when you see somebody MIGing on TV or movies, they have the voltage and wire feed set to maximum because all the sparks and shite flying everywhere looks good... 😂😂😂
I use my Mig mostly for plug welding 1 mm car body panels.Recently my welds have a short vertical tail sticking up from the spot weld. I've ground down the welds and found that the upper region is hollow. The problem doesn't happen every time only occasionally. Any ideas?
Basically the experience of the welder as well as trial and error. That is the beauty of the new MIG 181 . Has a easy set menu that gets you very near . Straight out of the box .
