Welding Tips and Tricks

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.

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

Welcome to the forum.

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.

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.

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

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

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.