Thread: What is better than Unimig

Anyone know what mig welders are better more advanced/features than a unimig razor 200, i want akemppi 170 mig but just cant afford it

The unimig is a great welder but itsvery basic 3 dials thats it, welds aluminium ok i welded these light brackets the other week

I actually built the whole trailer

Just buy the kemppi, it will still be giving you pleasure long after you’ve forgotten the price, they are way ahead of everything else

Sorry to say it, but there is a lot of things better than a Unimig.
You just gotta open the wallet and pay for it which is the annoying part. Or pay someone to do it for you, which can often be more economical if it comes down to tooling up to git-er done.

IMO, the job you are doing is going to need a lot more machine than you've got, and an ideal welding solution to that end would be a 3 phase pulse mig starting around $7K. Pulse will help with the thick to thin joints and limiting heat soak on your longer runs, plus weld profile, edge wetting and undercut will be within spec. Crater fill functions will prevent the fish eyes at weld termination and prevent stress risers for future failure points. There are a heap of EWM's building boats on the far north coast nsw. The unimigs are there to tack up their jigs

I've got 3 machines by EWM. A manufacturer from Germany with a welding machine manufacturing pedigree back to the 1950's (first people to put inverter tech in an ACDC TIG, too, fwiw). Not many out there have that same reputation (others would be Lincoln, Miller, Fronius, Lorch, Kemppi). Most of these guys are doing R&D, manufacture, and sales all in house- so not at the mercy of third party far east copy-cat manufacturers who for enough volume and $$$ will paint them any colour you want.

Welcome back anyway, glad to see you put the toys back into the cot and joining us back in the shed.

A welder is kept for a long time. Buy the Kempi and work out the cost over 15 years - sounds so much nicer

I have kept the unimig for about 2 years maybe a little longer i absolutely love the machine it does what i want it to do , but i feel its a bit out dated to whats on the current market like the kemppi 170/200 evo or the esab c200i

A pulse machine is out of the budget

I like the digital screen on the kemppi and looks easy to use

Originally Posted by gazza2009au

...i absolutely love the machine it does what i want it to do....

Why change then....seems a waste of $ just to get a pretty screen!

I want something a bit more fancy a machine that can improve my shakey hands and run a better appearing weld kind of more smoother welds with less imput by me

The unimig is great but i have only ever used cheap machines, i had an esab caddy 155 the big transformer box on wheels now that machine was silky smooth welding aluminium but the machine was big and heavy

The unimig is the most expensive mig welder i have used but guys rave about the quality of the higher end portable machines which i can only believe will help with my unsteady hands

All of my steel welding now is done by unimig arc 180 welder so all my mig welding is for aluminium work

My unimig razor 200 is in the carry bag and is quiet awkward to get out and carry around i want something more easier to carry, the bag has the machine, mig torch, arc torch, regulator, earth cable, gas hose, and spool of wire has to weigh 20kg+ a smaller lighter machine would be nice

On balance, a good mig won't fix shakey hands. Sure, some do have voltage compensation that adjusts with CTWD (arc gap), but yeah, not going to find that on most machines. LCD screens help with adjusting the parameters, but this is also within the capability of the consistency of the machine's output.

'higher quality' machines will just get bigger and more cumbersome to move about. Some of the smaller 'prosumer' machines will have a basic pulse feature (non-settable), and claim proficiency in Aluminium. IIRC there is a few of the smaller BOC machines that do it, plus a Weldforce model (havent tested any of them). Possibly a few others that elude me.

You'll run into a heap of issues with a small MIG on thicker aluminium. The problem with Al is that it is highly refractory, and sucks all the welding heat out of the job- usually characterized by a sooty poorly wetted weld at the start, and a horrendous melted mess at the end of a longer run where the heatsoak gets too high. Your pictures show this. 'Proper' machines will allow a hot start on the MIG side, for a user defined time, and a ramp-down program to reduce heat towards the end of the job, with a crater filling wire boost at the end of the weld to prevent fisheyes. That's how some machines will overcomes this.

For a home fix, run preheat and shorter runs, cooling in between, get adequate wire in to fill your craters, and practice, practice, practice.

Originally Posted by Commander_Keen

The problem with Al is that it is highly refractory, and sucks all the welding heat out of the job-

Do you perhaps mean "conductive"?

From Wikipedia.

refractory is a material that is resistant to decomposition by heat, pressure, or chemical attack, and retains strength and form at high temperatures.[1] Refractories are polycrystalline, polyphase, inorganic, non-metallic, porous, and heterogeneous.

Apart from being organic I don't see Al having any other of these properties.

I bought a TIG machine from these guys.
https://swswelding.com.au/

Couldn’t be happier. (Machine/Service - The guy that answers the phone is a welder!)

No idea how their MIG stacks up.

Originally Posted by BobL

Do you perhaps mean "conductive"?

From Wikipedia.

Apart from being organic I don't see Al having any other of these properties.

I stand corrected.
Aluminium is not refractory by definition, but it's oxide, Al₂O₃ is- thet's where I have become confused. This Aluminium oxide layer is why pulsed MIG or AC freq TIG is required to 'clean' the oxide away before getting to the Aluminium below. The aluminium element melts at 660 Celsius, and 2072 Celsius for the Aluminium Oxide.

A better measure may be Molar heat capacity - the amount of energy needed to raise a specific number of atoms of a substance by 1 degree Kelvin (essentially 1 degree Celsius, but different scale)
Aluminium - 24.3 J/(mol K)
Aluminium Oxide 89.7248 J/(mol K)

Originally Posted by BobL

Apart from being organic I don't see Al having any other of these properties.

Aluminium is organic?

Originally Posted by jack620

Aluminium is organic?

Sorry "inorganic"

Can anyone confirm the boc smootharc mig aluminium pulse actually works? Those machines are less than 1k the next pulse welder is 2k that is quiet a leap

Originally Posted by gazza2009au

Can anyone confirm the boc smootharc mig aluminium pulse actually works? Those machines are less than 1k the next pulse welder is 2k that is quiet a leap

There is a reason why BOC Smootharc machines are cheap. Cheap and quality rarely occupy the same sentence.
I fear you are looking for the impossible as the welder has not yet been conceived that can fix shaky hands or poor eyesight. If we are honest with ourselves, it would take a reasonably decent welder to exceed the limits of the Unimig (provided the amperage limits are taken into account and the upgrades you are looking at are no greater amperage).