About WeldFoundry

WeldFoundry started in a two-car garage in Elkhart, Indiana, in 2018, the same way most useful things start: out of frustration. Our founder, Mike Torello, spent eleven years as a certified welding inspector on pipeline and structural steel jobs before he tried to buy a MIG welder for his own home shop and found nothing but recycled marketing copy, affiliate blogs that had clearly never struck an arc, and forum threads full of half-truths. He bought three welders that year, sent two of them back, and decided somebody needed to actually test this stuff and write it down honestly. WeldFoundry is that somebody.

Who We Are

We're a small team of welders, fabricators, and one very patient technical editor. Mike still leads product testing and holds an AWS CWI certification along with a background in structural and pipe welding. He's joined by Dana Reyes, a former fabrication shop supervisor who focuses on TIG and aluminum work, and Alex Kwan, who handles plasma cutters, welding helmets, and safety gear and spent six years running a mobile welding repair business. None of us write about equipment we haven't personally run beads with. If a contributor hasn't put hours on a machine, their name doesn't go on the review.

How We Pick What to Review

We don't review everything on the market, and we say so. Our list starts with three sources: reader requests, actual sales data from major suppliers showing what welders are buying, and gaps we notice in our own shop when a job calls for a tool we haven't tested yet. From there we prioritize machines and gear from manufacturers with a real service and warranty track record, because a great welder backed by terrible support isn't a great welder. We do skip some units entirely, usually no-name imports with no parts availability or safety documentation, and we'll tell you why in the review itself if we've looked at a category and passed on a specific model.

Our Testing Process

• Every welder, cutter, or helmet we recommend is purchased or sourced through standard retail channels, not manufacturer loaner programs that get swapped back before wear shows.
• We run each machine through real fabrication tasks: multi-pass structural welds, thin-gauge sheet metal, aluminum TIG, and out-of-position work, not just clean bead-on-plate demos.
• Duty cycle claims get checked against a stopwatch and a thermal camera, not just the spec sheet.
• Helmets and PPE are tested for actual arc response time, weight distribution over long sessions, and battery life in cold shop conditions.
• We track long-term reliability by keeping test units in rotation for months, not days, and updating reviews when something breaks or a firmware update changes behavior.
• We note serviceability: how easy it is to find replacement liners, tips, lenses, and torches months or years after purchase.

How We Make Money, and Why It Doesn't Change Our Verdicts

WeldFoundry earns commissions through affiliate links when readers buy through our site, and that revenue pays for the equipment we test and the hours we spend testing it. We do not accept payment for placement, and no manufacturer sees a review before it publishes. When a popular machine underperforms, we say so plainly, even when it costs us affiliate revenue on a well-known brand. Our comparison charts are built from our own scoring criteria applied the same way to every entry, not sorted by commission rate.

What Makes Us Trustworthy

We're welders first and writers second. Every review lists the exact testing conditions, the materials welded, and the amperage or wire speed used, so you can judge our results against your own shop instead of taking our word for it on faith. We correct mistakes publicly with a visible update note rather than quietly editing pages, and we revisit older reviews when manufacturers release new models or when enough reader feedback tells us something's off. If you've used a machine we've reviewed and your experience contradicts ours, we want to hear about it, and we've changed verdicts before based on reader reports that pointed to a real defect batch we hadn't caught.

Get in Touch

Questions about a review, a suggestion for equipment we should test, or a correction to something we got wrong are all welcome. Reach out through our contact page, and a real person on the testing team, not a support queue, will read it.