If you're not sure which supply a particular machine needs or whether your workshop can support it, it's a sensible question to put to a supplier before ordering, and the team at TEC Products can talk through the options against your existing set-up.

Abrasive discs look interchangeable on a shelf but perform very differently depending on what they're made from and what they're used on. Cutting discs are generally thin, designed to slice through material quickly with minimal heat build-up, while grinding discs are thicker and shaped to remove material from a surface or clean up a weld, rather than cut all the way through it.

Budget for a first machine is rarely just the welder itself. A gas cylinder and regulator for MIG or TIG, a decent auto-darkening helmet, gloves and basic workshop ventilation all add to the real cost of getting started, and skimping on the supporting equipment tends to cost more in frustration than it saves in cash. It's worth pricing the whole set-up before settling on a machine at the top of the budget.

Duty cycle is one of the most misunderstood figures on a welder's spec sheet, yet it tells you more about real-world usability than the headline amperage does. It's expressed as a percentage over a ten-minute period at a given output, so a machine rated at 30% duty cycle at its maximum amperage can run for three minutes out of every ten at that setting before it needs to rest and cool.

MIG (metal inert gas) welding feeds a continuous wire electrode through a gun, shielded by a gas supply, which makes it fast and relatively forgiving for general fabrication, sheet steel and repair work. Jasic's MIG range is one of the more popular starting points here, covering entry-level compact units through to higher-output machines as work scales up. TIG (tungsten inert gas) uses a non-consumable tungsten electrode with a separate filler rod, giving a slower but tidier result that's favoured for thinner materials, aluminium and stainless steel where finish quality matters. MMA, or stick welding, strikes an arc from a flux-coated electrode and needs no shielding gas at all, which makes it the most portable option and a common choice for outdoor or on-site work on thicker steel.

A welding table is easy to overlook when planning a workshop, yet a poor one undermines accuracy on every job that touches it. If the surface isn't flat, nothing clamped or squared against it will be either, and small errors compound quickly on anything with multiple joints or angles.