If you're not familiar they're essentially a handheld mig welder. They can be powered by a stick welder, actual mig welder, or car batteries.
So I started browsing e-bay, and won this for $230. Showed up this evening.
Not bad as the going price for a new one is over ~$640.
http://www.amazon.com/Ready-Welder-Weld ... B004N4XMBS
Won a second one for $350 that comes with 20' long extension which I plan to use for work.
Seems likes there's a bunch of them out there that were used once or twice, and then put up for sale. The one for $230 was an auction put up by a pawn shop.
In order to simulate field conditions, and hooking up to a battery, I plugged the spool gun into my tig welder and turned off the arc force adjustment. This essentially gives a battery for the power source, with no method for adjusting voltage.
I then attempted to weld some rusty metal with some .35 flux core (The original spool that came with the gun was already hooked up).
It was a bit difficult to get a bead at first. With no voltage control, all you can do is adjust the wire speed, and .35 wire can carry a lot of current. After a couple I tries I was able to put down a couple beads, though I could only get it to run spray transfer with all the juice available (to be expected with a CC machine).
I plan on grabbing up some smaller flux core wire and giving it a shot with some batteries. I also plan to hook it to my dads mig machine and weld some aluminum - adjustable voltage should make it easy to run.
Long story short, these things are cheap on e-bay and it's probably worth buying. It's not as cheap as some jumper cables and stick rod, but if it test's out well on other stuff, it could be really handy to have around.
