That New Welder Smell In The Shop

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Buffalo20

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Yes, I’m experiencing that new welder smell in the shop. Thursday, on my monthly trip to the LWS, to pay for last months charges and to pick up some Sigma Green (Rex-Cut) grinding wheels. I ended up walking out with a new Miller Maxstar 161S welder. A 120/240 vac, 160 amp DC stick welder, that weigh 13#.

With the travel case, the welder and the 2 power cords (one for 120v operation and one for 240v operation) 40 feet of ground lead and 50 feet of stinger lead, the whole package, weighs in at about 44#.

The welder I bought is the base line stick model, the also offer a stick/tig model and a stick/tig model, with advanced features, as the welder will be part of the service truck inventory and we never tig weld in the field, the basic stick model is perfect for my needs.

Friday, I made a 25foot long, 10 ga wire, extension cord and a wiring pigtail. Then ran the unit for 2-3 hours, running various types and sizes of welding rods, 6010, 6011, 7018 and MG600 (stainless steel repair rod). The performance of the welder, exceeded my expectations (or hope), the weld quality was on par with the much larger Miller and Lincoln welders I own. I had demoed an ESAB 120/240 vac and Lincoln 120/240 vac welders, earlier this month, and felt the performance levels, left a lot to be desired. Both had issues running 6010 welding rod, and the Lincoln’s build quality (case construction and assembly) seem somewhat cheesy, so the Miller became the viable option.

1 - the welder
2 - case closed up
3 - 7018 test weld
4 - a mix of 6010 and 6011 test welds
5 - in the case

maxstar 161 004x.jpgmaxstar 161 008x.jpgmaxstar 161 012x.jpgmaxstar 161 017x.jpgmaxstar 161 001.JPG
 
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How heavy is that welder? it looks compact but Inverter welders nowadays are becoming more and more compact and almost as capable as the transformer type, that Miller's going to serve you well.
 
Looks lke it does not like 6010/6011 either
 
Last year I hired a welder to do some structural welding (I'm not certified) on a deck project. The guy showed up with that, or similar, Miller welder, at first I though it was a joke as the thing is tiny, about the size of a toaster. I thought no way it is going to lay a good bead. To my surprise it welded ⅜" thick steel beautifully in a single pass! Pretty amazing for 13 pounds.
 
13 pounds??! Wooooowww... beats the hell out of my old 150 lbs airco multi process.
 
TakeDeadAim said:
Looks lke it does not like 6010/6011 either
Click to expand...

It actually runs 6010 and 6011 quite well, as good as my Miller CST 280, the test welds, were playing with amperage, starting and stopping and increasing the arc gap.

I’m been running the Maxstar 161S, for the last 3 days and I very happy with the purchase and kick myself for waiting so long. I’m so thrill with its performance, if it wasn’t for the jobs where 480 vac was the power supply, I would remove the CST 280, from the service van. We did about 30’ of 3 “ gas piping in a boiler room, as part of a burner conversion, it ran the 6010/7018 welding rod, like the bigger welder.

The new DeWalt grinder the company sent to the job site, lasted about an hour, then that rancid electrical smell. Finished up the job, with the old trusty Metabos.
 
welds with 6010 just look rather rough thats all
 
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