Stark USA Portable Spot Welder 1/8" Electric Handheld Welding Tip Gun Metal Sheet, Spot Welding Machine for Carbon Steel and Aluminum Sheet, 220V

I am impressed with this Stark USA - Portable Spot Welder (Model No.: 55010, UPC: 715050825083). I cannot speak about its quality compared to other similarly priced spot welders currently on the market, but I can say this unit is better than the spot welder it has replaced in my shop. My old, recently broken, spot welder I have had for… I don’t know, perhaps up to twenty years now. I don’t recall the manufacturer, but I want to think I bought it from Northern Tool or Harbor Freight those many years ago. The old spot welder probably had somewhere around half a dozen hours of use on it – intermittent for small projects I have had from time to time. Note: I am a private hobbyist, not a production shop. Otherwise, I would have a unit costing a thousand dollars or more. So, a spot welder in the ~$200 range is suitable for my hobby needs. With my old spot welder, I had to conduct a number of repairs on it over the years, and change out the power cord to a longer, manufactured cord with a NEMA 6-20 plug. Point being, I have been deep into the guts of the old spot welder and recognize its design across all ~$200 spot welders like this Stark USA 55010 model. When needing to replace my old spot welder and looking online for viable replacement units, I spend a fair amount of time scrutinizing product pictures and descriptions to try to weed out those units I thought were cheaply made or poorly manufactured. As I stated, this Stark model is a quality build and impressed me! The craftsmanship of this Stark unit, compared to my old model which share’s a nearly identical design, is far better. Time has been spent on the fit and finish. The hardware is better quality, the castings cleaned up and well machined. The power switch is a durable component, not the hacked together thing on my old spot welder that I feared would break after a dozen uses (though never did), but it still felt shoddy. And a telling bit to the craftsmanship Stark has put into this new Spot Welder is the internal wiring. When I opened the new unit up to transplant my manufactured power cable from my old spot welder to my new spot welder, the connections in the Stark were very well made with both physical and soldered connections, with heat shrink, and heat/wear shielding. These internals are never seen in sales pictures or on a store shelf, thus normally where corners are cut on import junk. Not so with this Stark spot welder – very well done! (Sorry, I didn’t get any pictures of the internal wiring, and with it working fine, I am not taking it apart again…) And finally, for the operation: I was startled at how quiet the unit was when it makes a weld, which it did better than my old spot welder. My old spot welder simply didn’t make quality welds. I didn’t know that until I operated this new Stark model. I was expecting to get a noisy buzz box that did so-so welds like my old spot welder did. But the Stark is quiet! You hear it operate, it still makes some buzzing noise, but it is dramatically quieter than my old spot welder – which was noisy from day one out of the box. All said and done, I am very pleased. I have a little less than half an hour of operation on the new Stark spot welder, but so far, I am happy with it. I hope this review provides some insight.

This spot welder is solid. It works great for joining sheet metal to sheet metal, and after a few test shots of welding sheet metal to C-channel that seems to work well too at a thickness of about 3/16" (for the 240v version at least). The label says to use no more than 5 seconds on followed by 5 seconds off, I hit it for about 2 seconds at the 3/16" thickness and it looks to be plenty strong, more than 3 seconds probably would have melted the sheet metal. The unit comes with a power cord terminated in spade lugs - no plug - so be prepared to add your own plug to the cord before you can use it. I can see where some people might find this annoying, but I usually end up cutting off factory plugs and installing my own twist-lock plugs anyway so no big deal here. It comes with one extra set of tips, if my memory serves the tips eat themselves fairly quickly so I'll probably stock a dozen pairs or so. The only thing I can say in the negative on this is the packaging. This is shipped in a cardboard box just slightly bigger then the device itself, with a thin foam inner package encasing the device. The thing is so heavy that thin foam was pretty much completely destroyed when I received it, and the outer box had a few holes in it from where the sharp edges poked through in transit. There was no damage to the device itself, but I spent a couple minutes blowing all the foam chunks off of it with compressed air. I can see where some rougher shipping would have probably destroyed the thing due to inadequate packaging. I'll be looking for replacement tips in larger quantities, and longer tongs would be a nice option.

There were a few minor issues with the welder/manual, but when I finally got to using the welder it performed great. The instructions tell you to use thermal heat compound under the welding tips, but don't offer any kind of specification or requirement. Also, none is included with the welder, so you have to come up with something before you can use the welder. After browsing around online for a while it seemed that the thermal compound used under a heat sink was the popular answer. I'm still not sure this is the correct stuff because it oozed out of the connection while I was welding. The manual also mentions a resistance adjustment that is not available on this welder. Not a serious problem, but if the welder is updated, the manual should be too. Some of the adjustments in the manual weren't real clear on what the effect of the adjustment was. The unit doesn't come with a plug. (Considering the variety of available 20 amp, 240 volt outlets available, this isn't all that surprising.) It actually took me two tries to get a matching set. Once I got the unit set-up, I performed about 80 welds. The unit worked as good or better than any other spot welder I've used.

Right out of the box I have had great luck with it. I am only using it for automotive sheet metal and it works great. My only complaint is the weight. On a bench or floor, no issue. Trying to hold it in the air and position it to use around a car is very difficult. Still better than a lightweight toy model. Glad I have it

منتج عالى الجودة ويتحمل العمل الشاق ومكون من مواد وخدمات عالية التحمل مثل اسلاك النحاس والمحول الداخلي ونقاط تلامس اللحام

Les électrodes sont hors de prix mais bon

Product does not come with plug for 240v outlet. Must be hard wired to an electric source. Product information states corded which is misleading.

Very bad experience