SIP Migmate spares (UK)

SIP are utterly bloody useless - I have been waiting 6 weeks for spare tips for my Plasma cutter - so long, I have decided to turn some of my own up.
Can't you get someone to turn you a suitable roller ?
Steve

Totally agree with you here Steve.
Martin: I thought you were ment to run the .8 roller (with ridges) with either flux cored or ally wire. You are running the corect sized tip for ally, aren't you? FWIU it's a larger dia hole as the ally wire expands more than the steel ones.

Steve(s) The manual does say to use the 0.8 ridged groove for ally wire but, even with light pressure on the top roll, it embosses the wire and creates dust. I would turn one up but I doubt I could make the necessary form tool for such as small groove. The tips were bought as 0.8 aluminium although there's nothing to identify it as for aluminium use, just the .8 marking. SIP's website is a disaster, full of broken links to promising looking pages like 'spares' and 'downloads'; I contacted Fema in Italy (the manufacturing arm of the company I believe) but they just passed my enquiry back to SIP in the UK and I've had no response from them in over 3 weeks. Martin

What about a plastic roller ? Make a form tool in the edge of a hacksaw blade.
Steve

Not easy getting consistant wire feed using aluminuim wire, on cheap MIG sets. You can make things work better though by sourcing some harder wire, thats less likely to be deformed by your wire rolls.
Finally contact tip must have more clearance than it you were using MS wire...........if you are running .8mm wire, then try using 1mm contact tip. As well as this blow out teflon wire liner with compressed air quite frequently, as there will often be lots of dust about which clogs the liner pretty quickly.
k

Martin,
I have a SIP Topmig 150 Turbo here in Australia that I would probably swap for a slab of cold beer to be honest. It was a cheap option when I was first setting up a workshop but has never performed adequately. The drive mech is so poorly constructed that even on ms wire it will stutter at the most inopportune moments. I took it back to the guys that sold it to me and they wiped their hands of it and passed me on to the importer (that retailer is now out of business....hmmm, maybe there is a god). The distributer claimed to not be able to find any problem in their workshop etc etc etc. I spent months trying to get it working properly but as we say in OZ, "you can't polish a turd". If I were you, cut your losses, unload it for what you can get on e-bay (or "LOOT") and get a quality unit.
Scott

Hello Scott, I have a crappier machine than yours, the SIP migmate 100. Well, I had a go at polishing the turd. Heh heh heh...
By supplying the motor control circuitry with a separate power supply, the wire speed won't fluctuate so much when welding as it normally does.
Later on I dumped the original motor control circuit and got slightly better wire speed control using this circuit. say slightly, because the mechanicals are still a let down.
My motor controller is in a box with several feet of connecting wires between the box and the welder so that I can adjust the motor speed control with my left hand. Also because I was too lazy to squeeze the new motor controller inside the welder case.
Just mentioning this motor speed controller in case you might like to try it on your machine.
Regards, John Crighton Sydney
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Scott I spent many weeks trying to find a unit that met my requirements of at least 160A and a Euro torch, that was within my budget. I narrowed my choice to the SIP or a Butters AMT 170 but the Butters machine had a poor duty cycle compared to the SIP (the SIP has a copper transformer, the Butters unit does not). I wanted to buy a used unit but all the single phase units of this rating were selling for more than the SIP cost new I have finally found a source for spares at: in mig/tig torches and accessories>mig spares - minimig. I haven't got round to calling them yet to see what they've got, but they do list a feed roll for the MIGmate. Martin