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!