rangerfredbob
Veteran Member
It's a big old Lincoln (idealarc? guessing '80's vintage) arc welder, don't remember the model off the top of my head but it's a big 3 phase unit with two voltage ranges, fine voltage control and some arc stability settings and a switch to reverse polarity... it's set up with a separate wire feed box on top... I can get a model on Monday but I know it's common so you guys probably know anyway...
Anywho, it's gotten moody and doesn't work consistently like this morning, very frustrating... would weld fine then it wouldn't penetrate the exhaust tubing I was welding on, pop, spit, sputter, get annoying... would usually get better if you let off and go back, eventually I just turned the wire speed down to give it some time to build heat which worked, then it started vaporizing the wire so I turned the speed back up, then burned through so I dropped the voltage a bit and it welded perfectly fine the rest of the day... when it was acting up I pulled up a piece of scrap and pulled the trigger to watch the volt meter and amp meter and they were wagging like a happy dog's tail...
Ok, rambling aside I'm assuming it's a dirty/loose contact somewhere on the power inlet side (the two outputs on the front are clean/tight) but haven't drug it out to look, in the 16 years I've been there it's had very little attention...
So, anything scary about pulling it apart? I'm assuming there's no giant capacitors or anything? Unplug it and go to town cleaning and tightening?
Anywho, it's gotten moody and doesn't work consistently like this morning, very frustrating... would weld fine then it wouldn't penetrate the exhaust tubing I was welding on, pop, spit, sputter, get annoying... would usually get better if you let off and go back, eventually I just turned the wire speed down to give it some time to build heat which worked, then it started vaporizing the wire so I turned the speed back up, then burned through so I dropped the voltage a bit and it welded perfectly fine the rest of the day... when it was acting up I pulled up a piece of scrap and pulled the trigger to watch the volt meter and amp meter and they were wagging like a happy dog's tail...
Ok, rambling aside I'm assuming it's a dirty/loose contact somewhere on the power inlet side (the two outputs on the front are clean/tight) but haven't drug it out to look, in the 16 years I've been there it's had very little attention...
So, anything scary about pulling it apart? I'm assuming there's no giant capacitors or anything? Unplug it and go to town cleaning and tightening?