Welding Tips and Tricks

New member/welder, blah blah blah, yada yada I say "welder" issues because I am certain the problem is going to end up being operator ignorance.

I'm running a Clarkeweld 130EN, .030" ER70S-6 wire with 25% CO2.

When I ran into the problems about to be listed, I was constructing a roll cage inside the car with DOM .095.

First problem I was running into was when I was under the dash bar trying to get it welded, the arc would cut out and the wire feed was making a ka-thunk ka-thunk ka-thunk in time with the arc starting again. My first thought was that I had a bad ground, but I'm using the bare braided wire method Jody talked about it in one of the videos, and it had been working just fine when welding the front side of the bar. Frustration got the better of me and I shut off the machine for awhile and went back inside. Came back out maybe 20 minutes later, re-positioned and got the section finished.

As far as I know, the Clarkeweld machines do not have a thermal cut off. There is no warning light and no breaker.

I am running a dedicated 20 AMP circuit breaker (solution to another irritating problem i had been having) and was plugged into the receptacle less than 15 feet from the breaker with a 10 ft. extension cord rated for 16 amps. I've welded a decent amount with this set-up to know it is not the problem. I also tried playing with the stick-out and gun angle, but no avail.

Later, I was welding another section of the cage which required an overhead position and started getting the same problem. I looked at how the lead to the gun was routing and there were no real tight bends that should have been interfering with the wire travel, but the lead was a little stretched. Moving the welder to the other side of the car seemed to help. The key seemed to be, once the arc got consistent, to just run it.

The second issue I had, was a sudden onset of spatter. Like, remove anything remotely flammable from inside a 100ft radius, spatter. Even the anti-spatter spray wasn't helping. Even after turning down the wire speed a bit, the spatter (more like shower of sparks) seemed to be worse than normal. I was running 3/650 (Voltage setting is a 1-4 notched dial with no indication of what each number is, wire setting is infinitely variable from 1-10 so assuming 1=10IPM, I was sitting about 6.5 on the dial).

I have 2 more bars to install before i can weld the cage to the foot boxes I made, after which there are 4 more bars to install. Given past experience, I anticipate issues with these first 2 bars, and welding the cage to the front boxes due to the cramped nature of the install.

If anyone is left reading this, do you have any tips, experience to share?

tl;dr: Inexperienced, self taught welder running into what could be wire feed binding issues, but can't be sure.

There are one or two more random instances that I run into, but I'll save those for another post

Hey there,

Welcome along,

I will offer a suggestion for your first problem, it sounds like tip of liner was jamming the wire, stopping it from feeding through the gun, while the rollers were still turning. Check your tip by taking it out and running it along a bit of wire, it should be nice and smooth, which ever way you turn it. Also keep the gun cable as straight as possible, It the liner is removable, pull it out and check it for kinks. Also, the wire tension could be too low, this is the screw holding the rollers together, this should be adjusted, so the wire can just push through your hand when you hold it and pull the trigger.

Good luck, Mick

Welcome to the forum Zfrk562.

weldin mike 27 wrote:Hey there,

Welcome along,

I will offer a suggestion for your first problem, it sounds like tip of liner was jamming the wire, stopping it from feeding through the gun, while the rollers were still turning. Check your tip by taking it out and running it along a bit of wire, it should be nice and smooth, which ever way you turn it. Also keep the gun cable as straight as possible, It the liner is removable, pull it out and check it for kinks. Also, the wire tension could be too low, this is the screw holding the rollers together, this should be adjusted, so the wire can just push through your hand when you hold it and pull the trigger.

Good luck, Mick

Thanks for the tip.

I'm about to head in and start the project again once the interior of the car gets warmed up (car stays outside and it has been below freezing, so i leave a space heater in the car for about an hour as i would prefer to not weld on frozen metal) if I run into the issue again, I will check on these things. I might hold the cable up with a piece of string from the roof of the car since looking at the welder position on the cart, it appears there is a sharp bend right out of the unit

The following link, shows you the manual that came with my Millermatic.
http://forum.weldingtipsandtricks.com/v ... =19&t=2527
It has an excellent troubleshooting section.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MduH4WjXfJU

WerkSpace wrote:The following link, shows you the manual that came with my Millermatic.
http://forum.weldingtipsandtricks.com/v ... =19&t=2527
It has an excellent troubleshooting section.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MduH4WjXfJU

Thanks for the link, Werk.

I was able to find the manual online shortly after buying the welder. Hadn't read it since I downloaded it about 2 years ago I did end up re-finding out that this thing has a 40% duty cycle at 60amps. Which clears things up to about the consistency of mud. For every 4 minutes of welding, it needs 6 minutes of rest in a 10 minute period. Why is this as clear as mud? Because I have absolutely NO clue as to which setting runs 60 amps. :bash head against brick wall: It does have something printed under where the torch lead exits the unit as "Thermostatic Protection" but that means absolutely nothing to me as there is no warning light, or circuit breaker (as previously mentioned). So part of what I think was happening was that it was overheating.

I did check the tension on the wire feed wheel, and it was fine. Made sure it wasn't over tight as well. Also checked the contact tip. The hole looked a little oblong, so I changed tips. After watching Jody's intro to mig welding video again, I realized I had the contact tip exposed WAY too much. The Clarke torch nozzle can be adjusted as far as how deep the thread insert is inside the torch nozzle itself, but I need to run a set screw into it because the nozzle keeps scooting back and end result is too much of the tip exposed (go effing figure).

I ended up tying the torch lead to the welder unit handle. There is a very thin bushing installed in the face of the unit to keep the hose from chaffing through, but it allows the hose to drop at a sharp angle, so tying it up about 3 inches out of the exit hole (stop snickering, she did not say that!)solved that issue. But the weird sputter/ka-chunk issue reared it's head again in another tight space. Lo and behold, the torch lead was getting into a tighter bend AT the torch handle. A problem I once again grew increasingly frustrated over due to the fact that any other position I tried, either put the gun at too extreme of an angle, or kinked the hose in a different way (cue the fail music from price is right).

The 'Duty Cycle' has a lot to do with how well the welder can dissipate heat. If you sit the welder near a snow bank, you'd be surprised at how much better the duty cycle is. The same thing goes for better heat sinks and better cooling fans. Get rid of that excess heat in your welder and that duty cycle is less and less of a problem.

Hey,

I thought of a possible solution to your spatter issues, it may be because of arc blow. Where magnetic forces effect the way the arc flows, for want of a better description, The arc will waver and pop, and the pool will fly out and the spatter will stick like s$%^ to a blanket. It is common in structures with od parts like your roll cage. This can be rectified somewhat by placing your ground clamp as close to where you are welding, and weld towards it. This can help.

Mick

weldin mike 27 wrote:Hey,

I thought of a possible solution to your spatter issues, it may be because of arc blow. Where magnetic forces effect the way the arc flows, for want of a better description, The arc will waver and pop, and the pool will fly out and the spatter will stick like s$%^ to a blanket. It is common in structures with od parts like your roll cage. This can be rectified somewhat by placing your ground clamp as close to where you are welding, and weld towards it. This can help.

Mick

That would be something to try. I do usually keep the ground set up a bit far away just to avoid getting tangled in the cable.

Ran out of wire last weekend so I thought maybe the spool getting low may have contributed to the start/stop issue. Turned out it didn't. I did notice my feed roller was feeding .8mm wire on the .6mm groove, so I switched that around, blew some compressed air down the torch (didn't notice any kind of restriction in the line) and went right back to it. Sure enough, bent in a tight spot, it started sputtering again. I started playing with the wire feed setting and it made some improvements, which baffled me. I did a test piece with scrap materials of what I was welding on and found the settings I have been using, but it seems like the welder randomly wants less wire (?).

Could this be a knock on effect of unfavorable torch lead angles?

I havent encounted anything where the welder suddenly spits out more wire, only less, from feed problems. You may have an electrical issue, resulting in the welding circuit being intermittently interrupted.

weldin mike 27 wrote:I havent encounted anything where the welder suddenly spits out more wire, only less, from feed problems. You may have an electrical issue, resulting in the welding circuit being intermittently interrupted.

It was more like the setting was suddenly too high. The sound of the roller never changed, the machine just suddenly didn't seem to like the settings.

I now have a buzz/rattle that emanating from the unit. Not sure if this is a cause of or by my issues previously mentioned. It seems to be working fine, but there is a very noticeable buzz whenever the power is on. switching the power dial changes the frequency and is accompanied by a spring-like noise (think about those spring style door stops in a house that little kids and cats seem to enjoy playing with to annoy the hell out of you). The spring noise also presents itself when you release the trigger and cut the arc. I'll tear the case off of it in the next couple of days and see if I can locate the source. Hopefully I won't be scouring the internet for replacement parts for a defunct welder

Today has been wonderful

On the plus side, I pulled the torch apart to see if I could rotate the nozzle 180* and see if I could gain any accessibility that way. ended up only getting about 15-20 degrees either direction, but it worked for what I needed. I ended up eliminating a screw and grinding down the top of the handle a bit to make it a bit more compact; made the nozzle set screw more accessible by filing a hole in the handle and saw that the trigger contact was getting a bit pitted (could be the intermittent electrical issue you were talking about, mike), so that got cleaned. Didn't help the new noise the unit makes

Hey,

Im beginning to think you should throw this machine into a deep lake, and scrimp and save every penny to trade up abit.

Evidently Craigslist can hold some bargains.

Sorry, Mick

It sounds to me like you have a wire feed consistency issue. The machine you are using is a low budget type machine and has low budget parts. The liners in these guns are not great and need to be kept as straight as possible. They can get the job done but bending the liner in any way will cause the drive rolls to slip causing feed issues. One thing to try may be knurled drive rollers if you can get them for that machine. This will wear out the liner faster but may give you better results.

Arizona SA200 wrote:It sounds to me like you have a wire feed consistency issue. The machine you are using is a low budget type machine and has low budget parts. The liners in these guns are not great and need to be kept as straight as possible. They can get the job done but bending the liner in any way will cause the drive rolls to slip causing feed issues. One thing to try may be knurled drive rollers if you can get them for that machine. This will wear out the liner faster but may give you better results.

weldin mike 27 wrote:Hey,

Im beginning to think you should throw this machine into a deep lake, and scrimp and save every penny to trade up abit.

Evidently Craigslist can hold some bargains.

Sorry, Mick

I never assumed this unit was any kind of hidden gem, otherwise they wouldn't have folded. Luckily the big welding tasks are done for this project, so if this unit is truly toast, oh well. I got my money out of it. Maybe it has enough life left to make some sculptures out of the scrap pieces that I can sell as a welder upgrade fund..

I probably will end up looking into one of the big three as a replacement, but still stick with a 120 volt unit. TIG is a long way off for me to justify (even though i would love to learn), and it sounds as if quality is much better in the 220 range, which would require another rewire of the garage (maybe for the next house).

thanks for the advice everyone.

It's amazing how fast you get your money out of these 115 migs. I've had three of them.
If you do get a different mig machine, the hobart handler 140, is the best of the three migs....
Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Hobart-500559-Han ... hobart+140


For what its worth,
~John

Hi, I'm new here and maybe you got the "clark junker", I mean clark welder issue solved,,, but if not, I do know what the problem is, they have been out of business for awhile, but before they closed, I had a clark welder and had the same issue ,I called and they explained to me what has to be done to correct the problem,,, it needs to have a couple wires switched inside so it can read off the wire feed speed rheostat correctly, it is a factory defect, the rheostat is junk but has a second "side" to it so that can be used for awhile, until that side goes bad and then replacement of the rheostat is the only option. if you still need the diagram to repair it, just email me and I will dig through my notes to help you get it going again.

Andi98xp wrote:Hi, I'm new here and maybe you got the "clark junker", I mean clark welder issue solved,,, but if not, I do know what the problem is, they have been out of business for awhile, but before they closed, I had a clark welder and had the same issue ,I called and they explained to me what has to be done to correct the problem,,, it needs to have a couple wires switched inside so it can read off the wire feed speed rheostat correctly, it is a factory defect, the rheostat is junk but has a second "side" to it so that can be used for awhile, until that side goes bad and then replacement of the rheostat is the only option. if you still need the diagram to repair it, just email me and I will dig through my notes to help you get it going again.

I actually just got done tracing the source(s) of the problem. The buzzing/spring noise is actually coming from the massive transformer in the back. It starts out buzzing, but once it warms up, it starts making the springy sound when you let of the trigger and the relay opens. Wouldn't have bet on that being the source of both issues since there shouldn't be any moving parts in it.

The wire feed problem kind of looks like someone tried to assess in the past as both terminals on the motor have been soldered on. But what I found is happening, is that it warms up and actually slows down. Set on 6, with a 6 second trigger hold, I got 29 inches of wire fed out. 2+2 does not equal 4 here. So either your rheostat theory is correct, or that motor is crapping out.

In either case, the transformer problem is probably going to render any repairs, moot.

The wire feed speed knob and it's numbers are for you to remember what setting you used and worked for your particular application. They don't mean anything as in a specific ipm. 1=slower & 10=faster, so at setting 6 you got 29" that would equate to 290ipm. Try setting 4 1/2 or 5 and see what you get.

ARPolisher wrote:The wire feed speed knob and it's numbers are for you to remember what setting you used and worked for your particular application. They don't mean anything as in a specific ipm. 1=slower & 10=faster, so at setting 6 you got 29" that would equate to 290ipm. Try setting 4 1/2 or 5 and see what you get.

The point is, I no longer trust the wire feed to remain constant. once all the noise starts, so do the problems. if the process started with power 2, wire 5; eventually the 5 setting would be too high and need to be turned down to about 4.25. With the information i just found out, i'm guessing that somewhere in the machine, resistance is building up creating a voltage drop within the wire feed circuit and requires the wire setting to be turned down so that the motor can actually keep up.

I don't have the money for a new rig, so until the smoke escapes from this unit, i'm just going to keep using it. At this point, it's all small projects that shouldn't require power to be turned up higher than 2.

Consider some auxilliary cooling... cut a hole and add a squirrelcage fan to really move some air through it.

Might not "solve" the issue, but you may get longer use before the trouble kicks in.

Just a though...

Steve S