[darrinf]

I have the 181i and it works fine for what I'm doing. If I were doing a lot of fab work I'd have gotten a higher quality Miller MIG and perhaps a dedicated TIG as well. I needed a machine to do light fab on my project, including welding a bracket to the firewall, patching the tunnel - which are both thin gauge material, made my own trans crossmember and welded brackets on the rearend housing. Basically nothing over 1/4" thick and all carbon steel. I do plan to weld my stainless exhaust so the TIG function is nice. I do agree with all the comments about getting what you pay for. If I wanted to spend a few thousand on a high quality welder I would have, certainly nothing wrong with that. Of course I did have to fix the wire feed already - one of the gears is pressed on to a knurled shaft, and the gear started slipping. Other than that it's worked fine.