Have you ever used..., Spot and Stitch welders from Eastwood? Options

[Quebecer]

Hey guys,

Has anyone ever used the following Spot and Stitch welders sold by Eastwood?

Let me know what you think...

[lapuwali]

Just resurrecting this...

I'd used the Eastwood spot welder before, with good results, and I'm soon to use it again for a floor on my "other" Porsche. kwales' bad experience puzzled me, as I had no difficulty. I recently got an auto-darkening helmet, so just now, as a test, I took a bit of 16g sheet scrap that had surface rust on it, and a bit of 22g scrap that had a bit less surface rust on it. I did ZERO prep work, other than flattening both pieces. I clamped them together with vice grips.

Using 60 amps (their recommendation) and a new tip, I made two spot welds. The directions on the device are to let the electrode touch the surface, which starts resistance heating, then pull the electrode up just a tad (there's a trigger that sets the electrode position) and get an arc started. The color of the metal went from dull red to bright white instantly (and my new helmet darkened), unless I pulled up too far, when it would get much dimmer or go out entirely.

Holding the first arc for about 4 seconds gave me a spot on the other side of the 16g sheet (was welding the 22g to the 16g bit), but no real penetration, and I could pull it off pretty easily. Holding the arc for about 10 seconds (took two tries, broke the arc once pulling up too far), I got a good sized ring of discoloration on the back side and some obvious melting. The front side was quite melted. I couldn't pull the two apart even with a hefty tug. Considering spot welds aren't supposed to be individually all that strong, I didn't give it a really serious stress test.

So, I'm convinced this thing does work as advertised, even with pretty sorry starting materials. If you have a need to weld to panels together with either relatively low heat and distortion, or you're trying to replicate spot welds for "authenticity", and you either don't want to buy a bulky "real" spot welder, or you simply can't get to both sides of the panel easily, this is a good tool. If you already have an arc transformer, the attachment itself is only $50 or thereabouts.

Sorry, no pics, my camera batteries are dead.