New welder !

Well , new to me . Found a Lincoln Weldpak 175 in like-new condition , he was asking $375 I offered $275 and he accepted . It really is like new , contactor tip is clean and so is the nozzle . It also came with a

2lb roll of flux core and a regulator . And to add some icing to the cake , I sold my Weldpak 100 to a neighbor for $130 so my net cost was only 145 bucks . The only downside is that this one is 220V , so it's not as portable as the 110V Weldpak 100 . I'll be changing some power plugs out so all the 220 stuff will use the same one . The 8ga power cord (from the panel to a female plug) for the plasma cutter will become an extension cord that will work with the new MIG , the TIG and the plasma cutter . Snag

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Good catch!

Speaking of new welders, a couple of impending projects are pushing me toward buying a spot welder. I've used an industrial one and have some experience with adjusting the settings. What's the opinion of the 240V Harbor Freight one? It lacks a timer but they aren't that hard to make.

I can't help you with that question , but I have seen some interesting plans based on MOT's ... (microwave oven transformers)

I can't help you with that question , but I have seen some interesting plans based on MOT's ... (microwave oven transformers)

Snag

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I've built quite a bit of high power industrial equipment, up to 1000A and

1200VAC plus 300VDC EV batteries, and seen the damage a mistake or poor connection can cause. Although a spot welder is simple it is considerably beyond what I'm willing to build working alone without engineering advice. I'm very careful with 120V and bought a megger to check insulation.

I was out sick one day and came back to find a large black burn circle on the floor, centered on where another piece of equipment had been and extending up onto the machine I had been working on, where I had been standing. The story was that some newly hired junior engineers had been trying to determine the proper phase sequencing to a power supply by holding the 480VAC cables against the terminals, and one slipped and touched and grenaded a large electrolytic capacitor.

One of them had previously tried to convince me that the base of a grounded-emitter transistor would draw only microamps from a connection to a higher voltage source, a TTL output, because that was a simplifying assumption in the transistor model. I couldn't convince him that the base was a forward biased diode that would short out the source.

Nice. Now lets hear about duty cycle on a welding marathon. I know. I know. You might not have a large welding table fully tacked up ready for a nonstop welding just now. When you do have a project like that let us know how it goes.

I do not know, but I sure would like to. There are some products I could sell if I felt I could recommend a low cost machine to my customers to assemble. There are tax reasons I would just want to sell ready to weld parts and an assembly jig.

Electricity is some funny stuff. I've mentioned this before but it may be worth another mention. For about 10 miles of an 18 mile underground telephone cable there was a 100KV (I think that's correct) cross country transmission line running parallel... on the other side of the road... A long way on the other side of the road. The induced voltage on our telephone cable was so high it was dangerous. I didn't understand it at the time, but we ran some sort of step down transformer to drop the voltage. I still don't know how we overcame the noise completely. We had physical pairs, 4 24 channel digital T carriers, and a couple 82A 6 channel analog carriers on that cable as well. I guess to some extent that goes to how well the old 500 desk/wall sets were built. LOL.

We used to trouble shoot induced noise from distribution lines with an AM radio. Just drive around with the truck radio tuned to signal free frequency and listen for a change in the noise. When it spikes the power pole nearby will almost always have a cracked insulator.

At 230V input it's rated 30% duty cycle at 130 amps . IIRC the Weldpak 100 was 20% at max output of 80 amps . The main thing is it will weld heavier stuff than the 100 does . Rated at 3/16" with shield gas ,

5/16" with flux core . It's very seldom I need to do a marathon welding project these days . But it's for sure this machine is more capable than the old one if I do .

Is this the welder in question:

.

I have one of these, and it does work pretty well.

Made in Armenia, not China, at least when I bought it.

It has zero electronics - it is just a very large and heavy transformer, so I often run it off a variac (not a thyristor light dimmer) to control the welding power. This allows me to spot weld

0.002" stainless (321) steel foil strips together without burning a hole.

Joe Gwinn

At 230V input it's rated 30% duty cycle at 130 amps . IIRC the Weldpak 100 was 20% at max output of 80 amps . The main thing is it will weld heavier stuff than the 100 does . Rated at 3/16" with shield gas ,

5/16" with flux core . It's very seldom I need to do a marathon welding project these days . But it's for sure this machine is more capable than the old one if I do . Snag

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I have a PowerMate (Century) Tote MIG rated at 75A. After practicing on the Miller at the Voc-Tech I took it in to learn to use it better. Although I couldn't the instructor could weld 3/16" steel with it.

The gems we get here, the pragmatism, the depth of "how to do it knowledge" - love coming to this group... Now you say it I can see it - but I would never have known that "trick of the Trade".

The 100 would do 3/16 with flux core and a slow weave . With solid wire and gas I'd get cold lap beads if I wasn't careful . It did do

3/16" OK on outside corners but that's about all .

Is this the welder in question:

.

I have one of these, and it does work pretty well.

Made in Armenia, not China, at least when I bought it.

It has zero electronics - it is just a very large and heavy transformer, so I often run it off a variac (not a thyristor light dimmer) to control the welding power. This allows me to spot weld

0.002" stainless (321) steel foil strips together without burning a hole.

Joe Gwinn

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Yes, the 240V model since I have 240V outlets in the shop and garage/driveway, and a heavy extension cable. Do you reduce the voltage below half, similar to running the 240V one on 120V for thin material?

0.002" 321 SS is heat treating wrap of which I have a partial roll. Is that what you use it for? jsw

With the 225 amp Lincoln AC/DC tombstone you have a somewhat enforced duty cycle - you gotta stop and reload the stinger every once in a while. I went from an old Emmerson 175 to the Lincoln a couple decades ago - actually I lent the Emerson to my younger brother and did without for a few years until I got a deal I couldn't turn down on the Lincoln (300 Canabux). I think my brother still has the old Emerson. I had a small job to do on a shipping container a few weeks ago - too far from a 220 volt plug to use the Lincoln so I would have had to haul the genny out as well - friend said he had a 110 volt stick welder he could borrow from his neighbour and a 100 ft #12 externsion cord. what a useless POS that thing was - even with 1/8" rod .I'm sure I wasn't getting more than 50 amps and I managed to trip the 20 amp breaker twice.. The work of loading the genny and the tombstone onto a trailer would have been worth it for the aggravation

During dove season we could just look for feathers on the ground. LOL.

Do you use the 120V one you linked to or the 240V version?

I happened to have a variac on the shelf I had planned to use for a plastic bending setup, but then I just used polycarbonate which I can at bend room temperature in the sheet metal brake.

I have only the 110 Vac version; although I do have 220 Vac available, I didn't need the bigger unit.

No, the heat treating wrap was just a handy test case.

Joe Gwinn

120 Vac.

Variacs are pretty handy.

Thin foil welds pretty fast, so one just operates the switch fast, without looking to see if the weld is done yet. An old photo printing timer (for an enlarger) would also work.

Joe Gwinn

I wonder how my dad would feel about me getting into his old dark room stuff to "borrow" his enlarger and scavenge for parts. LOL.

I've got a Lincoln AC only buzzbox, and I have definitely run up against its duty cycle welding well casing together. My life would have been so much easier back then if I had known that was what the problem was. So much about welding over the years I thought was my own inadequacies only to find out later it was the limitations of the machine. I guess the problem is I learned to weld with a torch, where the duty cycle is when you run out of acetylene.