Spent $150 on a cheap welding hood and it nearly cost me my eyesight

I picked up a no-name auto-darkening hood off Amazon for $150 thinking I was saving cash. First day using it on a job near Gary, Indiana, the lens flickered bad on a vertical up weld and I saw spots for an hour. Had to toss it and buy a Jackson CS Unbalanced for $250 the next morning. Anyone else get burned by budget hoods?

2 comments

2 Comments

emery87912d ago

Dude that sucks, reminds me of the time I grabbed a "bargain" respirator cartridge pack and found out they were expired halfway through a job. Saved a few bucks upfront, paid for it in cough drops later.

hayden_rivera12d ago

That flickering you got on the vertical up weld is exactly what scares me about those cheap Amazon hoods. I welded a bit in high school shop class and we had a guy who used some off-brand hood his dad bought online, the lens went totally black in the middle of a bead and he got a flash burn that had him squinting for two days. How long did you actually run that hood for before it started messing up on you, like was it flickering from the first weld or did it take a few hours to get bad? I always wonder if these things just have cheap sensors that can't handle the rapid changes in arc brightness on thicker metal.