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You can very well buy a mig-gun for $200.00 even @ Wal-Mart,but it will not be good enough to weld a roll cage. Not if you want it to hold up if ever in a crash. You can Mig weld a mild steel cage with a good Mig and it will hold if welded right. You run a bead down hill (welders know)with a mig,it won't hold!!!! Like someone said earlier you can buy a $200.00 arc (220 amp)and weld any M.S. cage and it will hold better than any mig weld.Take you forever to weld it,but will give you a stronger weld. I was a supervisor in the weld-bay @ Varco-Pruden for 14 yrs. been a welder for 25+ yrs.

BEWARE of who you trust to do any welding on your Race-Car. A poor weld is about like sticking bubble-gum on your cage or what ever you have welded,just because it is stuck on it does not meen it will hold.

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Anybody that can't weld the side or the bottom of a tube needs to go back to a GOOD welding school. NASCAR cages are mild steel and MIG welded on surface plates and jigged - they certainly don't turn them over to weld the sides and bottoms. You can bet if those welds weren't strong enough they wouldn't take the abuse that they do.

I used to make stock racks (2" sq tube, .120 wall) for a corrugated company for about 5 years. Forklifts typically destroyed the racks, but we never had a tube tear the weld apart - it would always tear out the whole tube itself - the weld was stronger than the .120 wall mild steel. Again, they were welded horizontally, vertically, and across the bottom. I don't buy that a MIG weld is for top surfaces only.