[Shop-talk] Eastwood Welder: made by Lincoln?

[David Scheidt]

On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 11:24 AM, Doug Braun <doug at dougbraun.com> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I saw an ad from Eastwood announcing a new MIG welder:
>
> http://www.eastwood.com/mig-welder-110vac-135a-output.html
>
> The interesting thing is, both outside and inside, it looks exactly like a
> Lincoln model.  Has Lincoln made an EM deal with them, or are both Eastwood
> and Lincoln getting them from some third party?
>
> I have had a similar model from Lincoln for 6 years or so, and it has
> served me well.  Considering that Eastwood stuff is generally somewhat
> overpriced, their price on this unit seems unusually low.
>
>
It's a chinese copy of the Lincoln.  (I don't know where lincoln builds
their low end welders these days, for a while they were built in Mexico.
Don't know if they still are.  It could well come out of the same factory.
But even the US made ones have lots of chinese parts in them.)  If eastwood
is selling it for $300, it probably means others are for 200.  Eastwood,
being Eastwood, neglect to mention the country of origin.

There are quite good welders coming out of china these days.  There's also
junk.  Depends on the bits in the box.  (quality of transformer, choice of
the power transistors, mostly.)  I hate to say it, but it's 2010, and a mig
welder is no longer anywhere near high tech.



-- 
David Scheidt
dmscheidt at gmail.com