Welding Tips and Tricks

Brought it home for $500.
Living on a 50 amp breaker.

Congratulations, John,

That's a sweet deal! Have you given it a good workout, yet?

Steve S

Otto Nobedder wrote:Congratulations, John,

That's a sweet deal! Have you given it a good workout, yet?

Steve S

Trying to.

Its very limited on a 50 amp breaker.
I'm tryibng to run a 70, or 100amp cabable line to it.

I did burn some 8010 downhill.
Just messing around.
3/8" wall pipe to 1/4" plate...
125 amps, 100% arc force.

This is just practice, mind you.
Not going anywhere except the the scrap bin.

Just practicing stepping vs drag.

I got my htp 25" 17 torch hooked up.

A good friend of mine on WeldingWeb sold me a Miller pedal for it.

And I have a bunch of scrap 3/16" alum.

3/16" butt.

Somewhere around 150-200amps.
1/8" E3 tungsten.
1/8" 4043 rod.
#5 cup, gas lens.. bout 20cfh.

Score!! Congrats. That will make you some $$$.

Very nice....wish I could find a deal like that.

Just out of curiosity, what kind of place did you buy from? The first two photos show a "used car lot" full of machines on pallets.

Artie F. Emm wrote:Just out of curiosity, what kind of place did you buy from? The first two photos show a "used car lot" full of machines on pallets.

Called Richie Bros auctions.

Yeah,
They had 35 welders, and tons of tools and welding stuff.

You want to see pics of the stuff??

Bravo!! I love mine!
I would buy another one in a heartbeat

Adam

Damn Ak!! That sounds like an awesome deal to me! I wish I could score something like that! Damn I'm jealous!!!!!!!!

Good score. Same machine I have been using daily for the last 15 years. I can attest for their longevity, running pretty much at 250A AC for the majority of that time. They do a sweet job on your common SS as well.

TamJeff wrote:Good score. Same machine I have been using daily for the last 15 years. I can attest for their longevity, running pretty much at 250A AC for the majority of that time. They do a sweet job on your common SS as well.

Got a few questions for you, Jeff.
What breaker you run this machine on, and what gauge of wire?
Where do you set that HF adjustment knob, the one that's under the door?

Other then that, I'm really pleased with the machine....

I have it on it's own 100 amp service, IIRC. I can check. It's 4/0 or 600V wire to the service. Just go by the code for max amp draw, distance from the service etc.

On aluminum I am running an 1/8" pure tungsten with a #7 cup with a stubby cap. HF is set to about 60 but I am punching thru anodized and other dirty metal. I rarely venture below 175A AC welding your run of the mill aluminum fab. 200A is really the minimum with 1/8 tungsten. I can weld lower than that with it but I really have to pay attention. I'm just too lazy to change out my kit for all the different material thicknesses and just compensate other ways.

Someone borrowed the use of my machine over the weekend and left the foot pedal hooked up. I was curious to see what I could do with it on anodized. The machine is set at 250 and I just used the wa-wa technique with reverse travel. I haven't used the pedal regularly for many years. Kind of looks like a stick bead. Got a couple of surface pits going up and over the smaller pipe because the cup was in the way and I took my eye off while I was repositioning on the fly.



It was a little awkward, but I know I could nail it with a bit of practice. Not bad for a first try with an odd technique.

Check your HF points. Mine were roasted when I started to use this machine. I ended up chucking them up in the drill press on some wet/dry sandpaper and cleaned them up and reset the gaps and I got better starts out of it.