Before you chose the best welder, you might as well know what is welding?  Well, it's a simple concept actually; metals or thermoplastics are generally joined together by means of heating surfaces until malleable and connecting gaps with a filler material.

Even though the nature of welding is simple, safe welding demands conscious cautionary decisions, and large-scale professional welding will take years to perfect. If you would like to weld in your own home, there are a lot of things you must consider in order to pick a machine suited for you.

Most people would first consider the price of the machine. Prices are a very important factor but there are other factors that are just as important. Like knowing what your need is, knowing what would be the purpose of you purchasing a welder and would it still serve its purpose after a year or two. Think about your present and future welding needs. Will you be using the machine to fix a small crack in your grill? Or are you going to use it for larger-scale jobs or projects?

After knowing your needs, you can know decide either to go for a heavy-duty welder that are used for metal 1/4-inch-thick or thicker or a hobbyist's welding kit for thin sheet metal.

Take into account as well the materials you may be dealing with. For ferrous materials like steel, you need to acquire a Shielded Metal Arch Welder or Gas Tungsten Arch Welder commonly known as SMAW and GTAW units, respectively. For nonferrous materials like aluminum, a Gas Metal Arc Welder works best , this type of welder is also recognized as GMAW.

Another crucial thing is to decide which option you want to select; AC or DC Welding Output. You need to choose the option after enough consideration. It will entirely depend on your requirements. AC welding output is available at a lower price. DC welding output is a bit costlier. Apart from that, AC welding output is easier to carry as compared to the DC output. However DC typically offer  better output and deeper heat penetration. In addition to AC versus DC powering you should also take into consideration how much energy the welder uses. Make sure you didn't  get  a machine too big for your workshop's power supply , the last thing you need is a blown circuit simply because you connected a huge welding unit into a small power supply.

Another thing to consider is the duty cycles. Duty Cycles represent the amount of time a welder can stay active before having to cool off. This depends actually on the task or project that you will be doing. You may want to know how long the project will take so you could better decide what kind of machine to select.

Lastly, talk to experts. Ask experienced welder for further guidance or tips. Talking to those people with experience about welding reduces the chances of you getting into a problem with choosing the right welding machine.

So now you have the basic information you need to decide what's  the best unit to select. These are only guidelines, last decision would still fall on you and you need to select something that suites your needs.