Chicago Electric 90 amp flux wire welder review

This is the little trailer I made with the flux cored welder! 

        As a professional welder I have used all the brand named welding machines out there.  There is no doubt that they perform well and with that comes a high sticker price!  Not everyone wants to drop a couple thousand dollars to have a welding machine that they are only going to use on the weekends.  Now you can go to your local hardware store and get a welder for probably three to five hundred dollars that would work just fine but what about the lesser known off brands that you see at stores like harbor freight.  I would constantly see the ads for Chicago Electric.  Now the age old saying goes, "you get what you pay for." The price is so low it makes you wonder if it's even worth it.  All I knew about this brand is that it was a cheap welder.  I needed something that I could weld thin gauge mild steel.  I decided to give Chicago Electric a shot!  I purchased the 90 amp flux cored welder from my local Harbor Freight.  This machine will run off of a standard 110 volt 20 amp outlet.   The machine has a high and low setting and a wire speed setting.  Simple enough!  I tried it out on some scrap steel that I had laying around just to get a feel for the heat settings.  I was really impressed with the first couple of beads!  The wire diameter is .030'' which is a lot thinner than I am used to but it is ideal for thin gauge steel.  If you have ever tried to weld sheet metal with a stick welder you'll know that it's easy to blow a hole right through it.   The unit came with a one pound spool of wire and after I used all that up I bought another spool of gas-less Flux cored Lincoln brand wire and it welded even better!  If you wanted to go with a larger diameter wire all you have to do is change the gun tip and the roller to whatever size wire you want to use.  The gun lead and the ground wire are about 6ft. Long.  The machine has to practically be right next to you when your welding.   It has a duty cycle of 20%.  What this means is that you can weld for 2 continuous minutes out of 10 and let it cool for 8 minutes.  That's usually plenty for putting stuff together around the house.   I've ran 5 spools of wire through it and haven't had any problems.   I wouldn't recommend welding anything thicker than 3/16" of an inch.   This is actually great for thin metal.   I've even used a 100ft. 14 gauge Extension cord and it was welding like a champ.   According to the manufacturer,  a drop cord is not recommended unless it's a 8 or 10 gauge.  I used it to build a small trailer to pull behind my lawn mower.   One of the things I noticed when using this machine is it doesn't weld through rust or paint very well.   Once you clean up your metal it welds really good.   I've recommended this welder to fellow welders.  It performs well enough around the house for small projects.   For the price I would definitely buy this again!

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Jackson Truesight ll

     
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        Hello to my fellow welders out there! I am here to give you guys an honest review of my Jackson Truesight 2 weld hood.  I have been in the welding industry since 1999 and I have had my fair share of welding hoods.  So, when it comes time to purchase a hood I was looking for a auto darkening lense that has a wide view.  The company that I work for supplies everybody with the standard 4 1/2 inch X 5 1/4 inch clear lense. I go through these pretty frequently so this is something that I didn't want to buy if I don't have to.  I noticed that the Jackson Truesight 2 has a gasket on its clear sheild but the dimensions are exactly the same.  To me, this was a large deciding factor.  I didn't want to have a hood that has it's own special clear lense.  This can be very costly if you do a lot of welding.  The hood came with one clear lense. I have had this hood for 2 years now and I am still using the same original clear lense!  I simply take a standard clear lense and put it in front of the original clear lense.  It's a little tight but it works and I haven't had any problems.

         The view out of the lense is like welding in high definition!  It has a blue green tint.  Now for someone who is used to the traditional green color lense it will take a little while for your eyes to adjust to the different color.  If you normally weld with a shade 10 in the green you might need to turn it up to a 12 in the blue.  I personally felt like a 10 on the truesight 2 was too bright for me!  You can really see the puddle and everything around it, I can even see if I'm getting undercut!  The lense uses 2 triple A batteries.  One of the first things I noticed was that the batteries will sometimes die on you.  What that means is that you can be welding and then all of a sudden you might get blinded because your lense just lost power.  I feel that with constant lifting of the hood and flipping it down the batteries move a little in their compartment and a simple spin or readjustment is all that is needed.   I never had this problem with hoods that use watch batteries.  The lense will go to a shade 13 and all the way down to a 3. It has a grinding mode,  a torch mode and a welding mode.  Now the cool thing about Jackson is that they have a five year warranty on the lense. Which is pretty good,  I've had auto darkening hoods that didn't make it past the one year mark!
        As for the head gear, unfortunately I had to take it off because I am required to wear a hard hat at all times. I still have it and it looked like it would have been really comfortable with a lot of adjustments but I had to purchase the hard hat adapter which in my opinion could have been made better.   It works,  however the clips that hold it on your helmet just barely covers the edge.  If you are welding in the air I would be extremely careful, the headgear has popped off and you'll drop your hood!  I think Jackson should consider redesigning the hard hat adapter.  Anyone who owns a Jackson hard hat adapter knows what I'm talking about.
        The actual shell that I purchased was the arc angel pin up doll.  A few years back I was on a job and saw a guy that had the same hood and I thought that the rivets gave  the hood a cool vintage look.  His hood was just a passive lense flip down.  I thought the true sight 2 would have the same shell but I was a little disappointed when I got it because there were no actual rivets.   The rivets were just painted on,  not a big deal but not the same as their flip down version. 
        There is one other thing I would like to point out about the shell.  It is very flexible and very light. When you read the instructions that come with the hood they do not recommend overhead welding. It's not a big deal,  I've done it and it's fine.  The one issue I had with this hood when I first began using it was that I would come home from a 10 hour day of welding and my neck looked like a lobster.  I realized that the shell was cut in such a way that it doesn't come down far enough to cover your neck,  so when I was welding my neck was completely exposed to the welding arc.   I could've attached a welding bibb on the bottom and sides but instead of that I found a 100% cotton face cover that would cover my ears and neck.  Problem solved,  no more neck burn!
        Overall this is a great helmet and I would probably purchase it again.   I hope this review helped.  I get commission through purchases or clicks made through links in this post.

Jackson Truesight II

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