Table of Contents
Best Overall – YESWELDER True Color Solar Powered Auto Darkening Welding Helmet
Premium Choice – YESWELDER Large Viewing Screen True Color Solar Power Auto Darkening Welding Helmet
Excellent Value – Tanox Auto Darkening Solar Powered Welding Helmet ADF-206S
ESAB 0700000800 SENTINEL A50 Welding Helmet
Ultimate List of the Best Welding Helmets Available to Buy in Australia
Do you care more about the welding experience your helmet offers than its price? We all like to pay less for a new product, but no one wants to fork out money for something that will give them a bad experience. The cost of a bad experience always outweighs the monetary value of an item.
Welding helmets are the kind of helmets that are commonly used in welding workshops. Its role is to protect the welder’s face, neck, eyes, and the entire head from heat, flash burns, infrared rays, and ultraviolet rays of welding.
Welding helmets are a type of headgear used while performing welding in order to protect you from harmful radiations emitted during the process; welding helmets also protect your face, neck against the flame and flashes generated during the welding.
Best welding helmet is necessary for the protection of your eyes, as the unprotected exposure to radiations emitted can inflame your eye cornea, which in turn causes arc eye. The radiations emitted could also burn your retina, which can lead to loss of your vision. Welding can also lead to skin burns as radiations emitted may also affect your skin.
This is why we tested, reviewed and compared 48 different welding helmets in our garage.
We then handpicked our favorite helmets for you to see. You can find their pros and cons as well as the unique differences between them, including price. You’ll also find a buying guide, which runs through the different aspects most people consider before purchasing a helmet. We hope this will help you in your search to find the right hood.
Do you weld professionally or at home? Then you will need a welding helmet. These helmets protect your face against the extreme heat and flying sparks of welding and plasma cutters and also protect your eyes against the bright lights.
If you’re welding, then safety gear is of paramount important. One of the things that you NEED is a welding helmet to protect your eyes from the arc. The UV rays that are emitted from the arc can cause serious problems with your eyesight if you don’t wear a helmet.
We’ve listed our top 10 welding helmets on the market today at a range of prices. All of these welding helmets are auto-darkening, which are our favorite type of welding helmet. Auto-darkening means that the lens does not have a fix shade and you can keep it on for different welding processes. The sensors in the helmet will automatically increase or lower the shade of the lens depending on the welding process, so they’re much more versatile. We’ve also written a buyers guide to show you how we chose our top 10 which you can see below to help you choose the perfect welding helmet for you needs.
Welding helmets are considered headgear or covers that are commonly used in welding workshops for protecting the face, eyes, and neck from welding infrared rays, flash burns, heat, and ultraviolet rays.
The rays from welding points can cause damage to different parts of the body. They can harm the skin and eye retinas which can ultimately cause blindness and other eye complications. Helmets are mostly used in places where arc welding activities are done; these arc welding activities may be gas metal, gas tungsten, and shielded metal arc welding.
Helmets help aid in the prevention of complications including inflamed eyes, red eyes, retina burns, and other physical harm that can be sustained in the workshop. Welding helmets have a window space through which the user of the machine sees through during work.
Technology has come a long way over the past few decades, and the range of helmets available spans from solar-powered auto-darkening welding helmets to basic, single setting helmets. If you came here looking for a specific type of welding helmet, you may walk away with a product you can use for many other tasks! There is also a wide shade range available on a lot of the options below, as opposed to fixed shade helmets.
All of this choice can seem overwhelming, but luckily we have done some of the basic research for you. We consulted experts, bloggers and customer reviews to bring you this buying guide and list of the top 10 welding helmets you can currently buy online.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll rate and evaluate the very best welding helmets.
The guide separates helmets by price point and feature set to assist you to discover the very best vehicle darkening welding helmet for your needs.
To make it to this list, a helmet needs to blow our socks off, and that's pretty unusual. These helmets were checked by our reviewers under challenging conditions and blew us away regularly. In addition to passing our quality tests, we've selected the very best welding helmets based on consumer evaluations, evaluations by welding specialists, our evaluations, and feedback from you, the Melbourne Metal Fabricator neighborhood.
The info in this document is modified continuously as welding helmets are updated or become obsolete, along with when improvements in welding helmet innovations struck the marketplace. We're continuously on the lookout for the latest, finest and highest quality welding helmets, so you can feel confident that the information you're reading depends on the date and relevant. Also check out Difference between Welding Soldering and Brazing.
Eventually, I put this list together to help novice and professional welders find a welding helmet that will satisfy their particular spending plans and welding needs. I've also made sure that every helmet fulfills the ANSI Z87.1 safety standard, so no matter which helmet you end up buying, you can be sure it will secure you efficiently from anything your welding environment can throw at you.
WELDING HELMET FAQ
What is an auto-darkening helmet? – An auto darkening welding helmet uses a special lens, liquid crystals, light sensors, and electronics to change from a #3.5 tint (about what a pair of sunglasses has) to a #9-13 welding tint almost instantaneously. The transition time is usually listed as something like .0025 of a second, compared to a literal blink of your eye at .1 of a second. They were invented more than 30 years ago, and have been the industry standard for at least the past 20.
What are the advantages of an auto-darkening helmet? – An auto-darkening helmet allows you to see to position the electrode, or wire feed gun on your work without needing a hand to flip the helmet down before striking an arc. Many welders have perfected the art of flipping a fixed tint helmet down with just a quick nod of the head, but that still doesn’t work for all situations and welding positions. On top of that, since the tint is created electronically, it can be adjusted to better suit all lighting conditions and types of welding.
Are there any advantages to a fixed tint helmet? – There are still a few situations in which a fixed tint helmet may be preferable. If you are TIG welding at a low amperage you may find the arc isn’t bright enough to cause the shield to darken, or it may want to strobe if the brightness is close to the threshold of the helmet’s sensitivity. Also welding with an oxy-acetylene torch, or using a plasma cutter typically requires a #5 tint, lighter than most auto darkening helmets can provide, on top of the same sensor issue TIG sometimes has. There are now some pro helmets with “cut mode” specifically to address this.
What size lens do I need? – Most of the entry level helmets come with a lens of about 3 ½ inches across by 1 ¾ inches high. This is plenty big for most welding don in a shop, or done on a car directly in front of you. If you do a lot of under car work, or need to weld in awkward positions, like to install a roll cage, the larger view helmets will work much better. They typically feature a lens 3 ½ inches wide and more than 2 ½ inches high. For the ultimate viewing of your work the Save Phace helmets feature an auto darkening standard sized lens, set into a fixed tint #10 visor, for full 180° peripheral vision while welding.
How many sensors? – Welding helmets for most DIYers, hobbyists and pros who only occasionally weld feature 2 light sensors to know when to darken the lens. The really high end helmets typically feature 4 sensors to meet specific industrial regulations.
How long will the battery last? Is it replaceable? – It is hard to estimate how long the battery in any helmet will last. All the helmets Eastwood sells feature solar cells, as well as batteries. The solar cells provide the power to darken the filter when you are in the sun, or even with just the UV rays coming off of your welding. The lowest priced helmet we sell has a battery that will last for 3 years of constant welding, the higher end helmets are all rated for more than 5000 hours of continuous use. The batteries only discharge when the shield is initially darkened, so sitting on a shelf not being used they will last nearly forever. The batteries in the Eastwood helmets are also readily available and easily replaceable when the time comes. The Save Phace helmets use a 3v lithium battery – CR2450, which is also easily replaceable.
Can I use a magnifier lens? – Sure, the Eastwood and Save Phace helmets use fairly typical lenses, similar to many other welding helmets, so fitting magnifiers or replacement lenses is no problem.
Do all helmets feature adjustable tint? – Except for the most basic helmet we sell, all the other Eastwood helmets feature an adjustable tint that can be set between #9 and #13. The Save Phace Gen Y helmets can be adjusted from as low as #3 up to a #10 tint, while the Gen X is fixed at a #10 when dark.
Do any of these helmets feature grind mode? – The Save Phace helmets feature a fixed tint grind mode for use as a face shield with an angle grinder, or even for plasma cutting.
Are replacement lenses and protectors available? – Yes. Replacements are readily available at your local welding supply store.
Which helmets are suitable for TIG welding at low amperages? – Some auto-dim welding helmets may not be sensitive enough to dim correctly when plasma cutting or when welding at low amperages (under 80 amps). If you plan to do a lot of low amperage welding we’d suggest getting a high end helmet with the maximum settings and range of sensitivity. Some high end helmets feature a mode that is sensitive to the electromagnetic pulse, rather than the light specifically because of this.
What tint do these revert to when you stop welding? – All the auto darkening helmets we carry are a tint between #3 and #4 when they are in their non-dark mode, the equivalent of a pair of dark sunglasses.
HOW TO USE THE CONTROL SETTINGS OF YOUR WELDING HELMET
The control settings of auto darkening welding helmets allow welders to make adjustments regarding the light sensitivity and delay according to their personal preference and the needs of their welding projects.
This is most likely the reason why auto darkening welding helmets have almost completely replaced the passive helmets over time. They provide more flexibility to the user, by giving him the opportunity to manually control the functionality of the welding helmet.
High quality auto darkening welding helmets come with knob and switches that control the light sensitivity, time response and delay of auto darkening filter. This fact gives the ability to the welder to ideally adjust the usability of the helmet to the specific needs of each welding process.
The proper use of the control settings is a skill that the user should obtain in order to be able to adjust the welding helmet according to the process. In this guide, we provide information about how to use the control settings of your auto darkening welding helmet in order to enhance the effectiveness of your welding helmet.
What is the role of the control settings?
The main reason that the control of the auto darkening welding helmets exist is to add flexibility to the work of the welder, by allowing him to work with more than one shades and decide how fast or how slow to activate the auto darkening filter of the lens.
Passive welding helmets had only one feature, the dark shade of the lens that they came with which usually was shade number 10. As a result, the user couldn’t make any adjustments, except from using other shade lenses for more protection, such as lenses of shade 12.
Passive welding helmets are extremely effective when it comes to protecting the eyes of the welder, this is why they were used massively in almost all industries. However, as the designs and structures of welding helmets evolved, the need for more customization in the use of the helmet led to more advanced adjustment controls with more specific settings.
Using the adjustment control settings, the work of the welder became a lot easier and faster. The user is now able to adjust in great detail all the functionalities of the auto darkening welding helmet according to the specific need of his project, and this way enhance his precision.
In addition to the above, this level of automation offered the ability to work much faster and convenient compared to past years. The control settings of the helmet determine how the ADF of the lens will work, and this way the welder can focus solely on the project.
Setting properly the control settings of your welding helmet can be a challenging task, although you can get used to it after you practice for some time. There are many factors that determine how you are going to use them, such as the welding helmet model and the specifications of the welding project you are working on.
