Welding Tips and Tricks

Hi,
Today, the frustration has passed the limit. In 2019 I bought a 210MP to replace a Lincoln Mig Pak 10. The Mig Pak 10 was about 19 years old and always worked great til I tried to run an aluminum spool gun with it. The Mig Pak 10 didn't work too well after that. After watching reviews on the 210MP, I thought this would be a great up grade. However, the wire feed drive always made awful noise of gear mesh too tight on one side of the gear. From day one, it had trouble pushing .024 wire. It would burnback and stick to the tip. No changing the settings helped to remedy this. Tightening the feed would cause a birdnest in the feed drive. Changing to .030 wire was better and I stuck with that for welding exhaust and other heavier projects. Lately, we have been welding body panels and need to use .024. It worked o-k for a bit, but then back to feed problems. As the feed is running, the rollers for the feed go up and down. It looks like the shaft for the drive roller is bent. Called Lincoln for tech advice. Lincoln was pretty much no help other than finding a Lincoln Service Center near my zip code. I call that place which is an AirGas location. The guy was trying to be helpful for a couple minutes and mentioned they are no longer a Lincoln Service Center. Recommended taking the welder back to where I got it which is a different AirGas location. Basically, I am stuck with it. Taking a bit of time to look into this I decided to take the drive apart. The shaft isn't bent, it's too short to be bent and is supported on two roller bearings which feel like new. The motor is totally silent. The problem is the driven gear seems to run eccentric. Now the question is, where can I buy a driven gear for the feed drive?

Thanks,
Mark

Call one of their service centers listed on their website https://mylincoln.lincolnelectric.com/n ... uage=en_US and have them order the part. You’ll need your serial number to ensure they get the correct revision of the machine.

I would do as cj stated, but, I'm missing why the machine works better running .030 wire and seems to go totally nutty with the .023 wire. Wish you the best and do keep us posted.

BillE.Dee wrote: ↑Sat Oct 26, 2024 7:10 pm I would do as cj stated, but, I'm missing why the machine works better running .030 wire and seems to go totally nutty with the .023 wire. Wish you the best and do keep us posted.

I have a multiprocess Miller and when swapping wire diameters, I have to switch the roller. It has 0.35, 0.30 and 0.24 grooves plus FC. Perhaps the OP needs to check whether he’s using the correct roller?

The 210MP does have different size rollers. .025 .030 .035. I am using the .025 roller with .025 wire. My guess is the gear running eccentric is causing slipping on the loose side of the gear causing the wire to weld to the tip. Then when the tight side comes around the wire cant push through the sleeve and balls up in the drive. .030 wire has just a little more backbone to give it a harder push through the sleeve. If the new gear is available along with replacing the roller, hopefully it will work o-k. I have my doubts....

Tensioning wire on a MIG is a bit of a Black Magic trick. My Miller has both a wire tensioner (at the roller) plus the spool tensions on the drive. I don’t know the Lincoln, so I don’t if it’s the same. But I had ALL KINDS OF PROBLEMS recently after a buddy borrowed my unit and then unbeknownst to me cranked down so hard on the spool tension that I had to take the machine to the Serice Center because I couldn’t figure out how to get it to feed wire worth a damn. (I never thought to check the spool tension *face palm).

Surprisingly, the gear is available by itself and at $15 bucks a pretty reasonable cost. I also ordered a new .025 roller which was also 15. They are being drop shipped to me, hopefully they show up soon. Then, we can find out if there is any improvement.
Thanks for the replies.

I'm not saying that you don't know what you're doing, so take it for what it's worth. The tension on the roll of wire is just enough to keep it from unwinding and turning into a slinky. The tension on the feed roller is enough to allow the wire to "slip" when the end of the wire is held between your thumb and finger while wearing a glove. With the driven gear in place and the machine on, can you see IF the driven gear is slipping from the drive? Also can you wiggle the driven gear while it is on the machine? I've got 2 machines that are nothing but fussy with tension adjustments. They make me drink beer. I'm forever indebted. Keep us posted please.

The gear and roller showed up today. It came out of Lincoln as next day air.

We've tried a little tension and a lot of tension. Neither gave us sufficient improvement. Hopefully I can find some times to get this together today.

I found a few minutes to put the feed drive back together with the new gear. I can say this has never operated this quiet. When I would push my thumb against the roller to apply some load it remained quiet.

The original gear it would make the sound of gGRRRrrrr-------------gGRRRrrr------------gGRRRrrrr......... The gear was running eccentric, meshing too tight on one side. This was also causing the shaft to move around instead of staying on a stable axis. I believe this was tightening and loosening of the wire between the rollers.

Hopefully tonight I will have a chance to weld. Then we'll see if the problem has been corrected.

thank for the replies,
Mark

I tried out the 210MP for a a bit. I didn't do a lot of welding, but I did enough to say the there is much improvement and I believe the problem is corrected. Can't even hear the wire feed working now.....which is probably the way it is supposed to be.

thanks,
Mark

Glad you got it sorted and for very little cost.