[blacksmoking]

My curiosity got the better of me when I was on ebay. I bought a 3 in 1 plasma cutter, stick and tig welder. It's capable of running on 110v or 220v. The problem comes in when I try to use the plasma, it will not arc. The stick welder works great(not as good as the old miller). I haven't seen if the tig works. But I wired it up 220v. Has anyone ever messed with these? I mainly bought it for the plasma.

[exnailpounder]

Welcome to the forum. It would be a great help to list what brand of machine you bought. Also the running joke around here is RTFM....read the f!@^ing manual. If that doesn't work then someone will be along to help

[Mike]

Welcome to the forum.

[blacksmoking]

The brand is "accurate tools", and the manual reads like the instructions on a bottle of shampoo. Lol it basically tells you to wire it up, and put compressed air on it. I forgot to subscribe to the post, that's why it's been a few days.

[The_Fixer]

Does your pilot arc start up? If it does, then it is probably your air pressure.
Plasma is pretty fussy about air pressure. If it isn't within a certain narrow range, the arc won't light.
Also your air needs to be very dry. Any moisture will damage your tips pretty quickly.

[blacksmoking]

It doesn't arc at all. I'll try hooking it up to my big compressor. I didn't have it installed when I was trying to run the plasma. I was using a little gas powered compressor

[Poland308]

Some of the Chinese plasmas won't arc unless the tip is in contact with the work piece. They need the surface contact with the grounded work piece to light up. I ran across some utube vids about it.

Edit... they need to stay in contact as you cut

[blacksmoking]

I'll mess with it, I might just take a loss and sell it and buy a real plasma cutter. This was a late night impulse buy from ebay.