My MIG welder (Clarke 151en in gas mode) was working fine the last time I used it a couple of weeks ago...

Wheel it out today and load up the mild steel wire rather than the stainless....

And it seems to feed and "weld" in pulses...its almost like its trying to help my chaintack..... the pulses are .5on .5 off....its weird...

And when it is "welding" the lights in the house flicker more than usual...

I also had it on full whack (151) and it was struggling to blow a hole in a piece of 1.6mm plate

What on earth is going on?!?!?!!?

Dunc

Feed rollers slipping?

Or you've signed up for your electricity suppliers latest offer to halve your electricity bill with 50%PWM technology

The lights flickering are probably due to your welding current demand in this mode.

i had a similar problem on mine.
Clarke 150te

turned out to be the feed wheel not running true, if i remeber corrrectly, the shaft got bent from over enthusiastic tension setting.

Its possible that the feed wheels are slipping...

But would that explain the crap penetration?

Is there any fix for that machine to make the feed a bit more livley?

its deffo wire feed. Check for tension in the rollers, excess bends in the flex and excess tightness on the reel of wire. The roll should turn easily. Is it a 5kg roll you have in? The weight of these can be troublesome on some machines

Yeah, its a 5Kg roll...

It was working before...has the stainless wire somehow damaged something?

I have tried playing with the tensioner on the wire feed wheels and also greeced the wire spool so the rheel spins smoothly...

All to no avail..

Meany...Might be worth pulling the feed system appart to see if it can be made to work a bit better...

how do the expensive machines feed the wire? Do they use the same thing? (one shiny wheel and one with slight grooves in it to grab the wire)

[Edited on 21/1/07 by tegwin]

I managed to somehow get the wire on the wrong side of the liner tube once, think it punctured it IIRC had to get a new liner. This could be causing it to stick if youve just changed the wire. Worth a check anyway if youve looked at everything else

Looking at the feed mechanism etc whilst operating the welder without striking the arc may help to locate the problem.

I've also had problems in the past where the wire doesn't feed freely from the reel.

[Edited on 21/1/07 by CairB]

I've got a 151TE and have just switched back from using the 5kg spools to the 0.7 kg spools. The motor doesn't really cope with the fat ones and the wire really likes to unravel itself causing a huge variation in wire speed making welding impossible. It used to clog up and the wire would bunch and snap where it met the liner. At first I thought it was my crap welding technique as I'm only learning so I was pleasantly surprised when the experienced welder who is miging my chasis for me diagnosed and sorted the problem. It wasn't my fault for once!!

Hi.


Might be barking up the wrong tree but s/s wire is very hard.
It tends to wear the hole in the tip into a slot. Sort of .8 x 1.2 if using .8 wire.
If you then change to m/s wire, this being softer, it will have deeper serrations from the drive wheel
which will catch in the grove in the tip.
If your s/s and m/s are different diameters this will compound the problem.

Pro welders use a round groove in the drive wheel with different interchangeable wheels for each size of wire.

The serrated wheels produce filings that clog tips and liners.

With all MIG probs, start by replacing the tip.

hth

Paul G

Sure the wire isn`t oxidised. Maybe try stripping an amount off and binning it. Could be a groove in your liner. New torch kit on Ebay is about 20quid. If your gonna do stainless mig you may be better with spiral type steel liner.

Alex

was just going to say the same, sounds like rusty wire to me.

wd40 on a piece of scotchbrite bulldog clipped round the wire before it enters the liner works wonders

Sounds like an electrical problem. At 150 that ought to power through rusty wire or whgatever. Check the ground cable in the clamp, the hot lead to the mig gun, something that would cause a bad circuit. If it were arcing, or had a spotty connection somewhere, that would account for your on/off welding too.

It wouldn't have a 'spot weld' switch on it somewhere, would it? Sound like the duty cycle on my old german Einhell machine.

lol..no spot weld button..

Will have to have a good look at the machine this weekend when I get home...I need to do some proper welding on the car so it has to be working properly or its going to look poo!!!

Ho hum..

Dunc