welder problems

rooster · January 05, 2006, 11:59:44 AM

We have a welder that was loaned to us (mig/gas) we were doing some welding in the trunk area and noticed some arking inside the door of the car while welding, a closer look we learned a drop light witch was hanging from the door handle was smoking and the wire was hot. My first thought was the drop light was making a better path to ground than our connection from the welder. Checking our connection looked to be good bare metal, clean clamp!
The welder we were using is not doing a very good job, so we quite using it and my sons friend brought over another one he got a harbor freight it works just fine. My question is what is it we have to do to check this out. Possabley a connection on the inside of machine we cant see? TIA

flt-blk · January 05, 2006, 01:20:57 PM

Where is the welder plugged in?
Please tell me you didn't plug int into the drop light?

GPster · January 05, 2006, 02:05:42 PM

How did you connect the welder ground to the work? With the engine out of the car or not hooked up to run and the gauges working you may not have a good body to chassis ground.Welding on the trunk floor would be to the body and if you grounded the welder to the chassis the shortest path to the ground might be through the drop-light hangingfrom a handle on the car body. I would question that drop-light. If it's a plastic light with no plug receptical on it and only a 2 wire plug without a ground The power would either be going back the nuetral wire (white) or the other wire (black) in the power cord. I can usually figure these things out if I'm there and check things one at a time, one-by-one but first I'd move the welder ground to the S10 hood. GPster

rooster · January 05, 2006, 02:51:13 PM

Welder is pluged into a 110 wall outlet w/ground, The ground clamp on welder was within 12" of the work being done on a gas tank brace. The drop light w/a metal shild and hook was hanging on the door handle, the drop light has a outlet on it, but was not in use, the outlet for the drop light and drop light itself have grounds also! This is what makes me think that there may be a bad connection other than what is seen easly!

EMSjunkie · January 05, 2006, 03:40:58 PM

How is the polarity set on the machine?
My mig has to be one polarity for gas and reversed for flux core.

just chiming in.

Vance

rooster · January 05, 2006, 04:09:19 PM

Quote from: "EMSjunkie"How is the polarity set on the machine?
My mig has to be one polarity for gas and reversed for flux core.

just chiming in.

Vance

The welder im talking about here does not use flux core that I know of! I see NO setting for polarity.

GPster: Theres no wiring in the car

GPster · January 05, 2006, 04:22:53 PM

I'm just going to throw some ideas out now. Plug the droplight and the welder into the same receptical. If you have 220 in the garage then you have both sides of the voltage and either side to neutral would give you power. Maybe you're going from one side to the other if different recepticles were used for the two things. What are the recepticles fused (breakered) at? It should have poped the curcuit or maybe burned out the bulb in the drop-light. Was the welder sitting on what you were welding? I'm glad you took the gas tank out of this. GPster

Flathead Youngin' · January 13, 2006, 10:05:39 AM

a buddy of mine (does a lot of body work) was going to trash his mig and buy a new one........he came down to see if he'd like my sp125 lincoln....."yep, I'm gonna buy one just like it!)

well, he got to talking to his dad about how crappy his century welded......his dad asked him how long the spool of wire had been in there......it had been in there MANY years.....doing body work, he doesn't burn it up as fast.......

he bought a new spool of wire and it welds like a new one......i guess some small oxidation had formed on the wire....try that!

rooster · January 13, 2006, 10:29:04 AM

Quote from: "Flathead Youngin'"a buddy of mine (does a lot of body work) was going to trash his mig and buy a new one........he came down to see if he'd like my sp125 lincoln....."yep, I'm gonna buy one just like it!)

well, he got to talking to his dad about how crappy his century welded......his dad asked him how long the spool of wire had been in there......it had been in there MANY years.....doing body work, he doesn't burn it up as fast.......

he bought a new spool of wire and it welds like a new one......i guess some small oxidation had formed on the wire....try that!

Thanks I will!

I had a friend come over and he wired the box in my garage with a line just for the 110 welder only 20A, he loaded me a sp125 Lincon like you have, now we have at least a chance to learn

how to weld. Works great!!!!! I will try his wire in our welder.
Denny

BFS57 · January 13, 2006, 01:24:41 PM

Hello;
I don't know how to weld and I learned some interesting facts today!!!
Thanks, Bruce