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

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.

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.

This is an ongoing review which will be added to over time as I learn the ins and outs of this device. The unit I ordered is the 240v version. It seems to be made of sturdy, high quality materials for the most part. So, first issue solved with some monkey business: The manual says to "align the tongs" before operating. To align, the manual says to loosen the four bolts (cluster of 4 bolts, two clusters, one on top and one on bottom. Note: our bolts are slightly different lengths, pay attention for reassembly). Further, the manual indicates which parts can separate via a detailed diagram on a separate page of the booklet. Obviously the tongs should separate from the unit easily, yes? Not in my case. We very carefully took the top 4 bolts all the way out, as well as the protective yellow backsplash panel, in order to extract the top tong (still attached to the beefy wire weave and metal casing). Turns out there's a thin sleeve helping to wedge the tong in place. This was extremely effective at immobilizing the tong, to the point we were wondering if the tong itself was bolted into the casing, hence our extraction process. This sleeve was not mentioned in the manual's text or depicted in diagrams, as far as I could tell. So, if your tongs do not budge when you try to adjust them by simply loosening those bolts, this might well be your issue.

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.

I’m pretty happy with this welder. I’ve had good results while replacing a firewall on an old C10. I really like the clamping pressure you can apply. Make sure all 4 surfaces are clean (front and back of both pieces of sheet metal). You will need to adjust the alignment on the tops which is easy - might want to think about the position the tips will be when clamping (not fully closed bc of the sheet metal being welded). You will need to buy a plug for this and wire it. I found one on Amazon. Wiring it wasn’t hard.

I love this tool, so far, I've really only used it on 26 & 24 ga. galvanized but just a fraction of a second zap is enough to create a solid weld. After more than a hundred welds, the tips still look almost new, they seem to be holding up better than I remember spot welder tips doing from back in my sheet metal mechanic days. The short arms that come with the tool are pretty restrictive, so I ordered a pair of the 12" ones, now I should have plenty of reach. With the longer arms, you don't get near as much pressure at the tips, holding the metal together, but except in extreme cases, it shouldn't be a problem. I wonder why I didn't buy one of these YEARS ago, can't think of how many times it would've come very handy. This IS a bench-top tool, it is not intended to be, or appropriate for uses other than that. One thing that would make this way more handy, is if someone made an aftermarket stand set-up so that it could be foot operated, like the commercial spot welders Ive used in the past.

I seen the reviews and I also did some youtube research. I cant for the life of me get this darn thing to work like i'm seeing others.. I want to use this on 26ga 304 ss and 26ga G90. I've tried 1-5 second intervals and nothing seems to make it strong enough to stand up to a flick or light tap. I want to love this product so bad and really would be a great tool to add to my metal shop.

Spot weld like a pro. Save time. No clean up. Just a beautiful factory like spot weld. I love it. Well worth the price. 4 sec on and move to the next spot. Should have bought one of these years ago.

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