westcliffe01
Veteran Member
I guess I was a bit of an unusual kid growing up. Amongst other things, I learnt how to weld when I was about 11. I spent my pocket money at the speciality welding store in town buying rods to try welding cast iron and things like that. I remember welding up a cracked hand plane body for the woodwork teacher in my final year in junior school and he was quite impressed..
Back then, I used an AC welder my dad had built by hand when he was an apprentice electrician. It had a bit of an unusual design, since the output was varied by inserting part of the core into a cutout in the transformer frame. So basically a variable resistor was introduced into the magnetic circuit as opposed to the electrical circuit. It was capable of astonishing current, but it made a really loud hum (too much clearance on the moving core) and it would spin the utility meter like there was no tomorrow.
Fast forward almost 30 years, 20 something domestic relocations and 2 major international relocations and I find myself worse equipped than what I was before I was a teenager. In the last few years I have been trying to correct that deficit and have meanwhile added a reasonable mill, a lathe project and a hydraulic surface grinder from the government "strategic reserve" to my collection. I tried an AC buzz box from one of the big box stores, but my impression is that you need smaller than 1/16" electrodes to make a bead with one of those and it will quit after 3" of that tiny weld.. Next attempt was when building my first trailer (which I needed to move) and I got a Lincoln Pro 100 (biggest one at Menards at the time). The little mig welder seems happy if all you will do is weld sheet metal all day, but when I started building a 7000lb gross weight tandem axle trailer this spring I realized that something better was required.
Finally after much procrastination and "priority juggling" (I did add a Bobcat B200 TLB to the collection in April) and with the summer apparently just arriving I took the plunge today and relieved someone of a good piece of "old iron"
360lb brute:
vs
I don't have a 230V supply in my garage or outside, so until alternative arrangements are made, I am powering it with my Robin Generator. That neccesitated a trip to Menards to find a suitable 4 pin plug. First attempt at hooking it up I only had 115V on the input, so some troubleshooting later I had it figured out. I also took the cover off to check the electrical connections inside and good thing I did. The "strain relief" had not been doing its job, and the cable had apparently been rotated through at least 2 full turns and a short was imminent. Fixed that problem and sleeved the cable with a piece of rubber hose to allow the strain relief clamp on the welder to grip properly.
So how does it weld ? Well, in my biased opinion.... beautifully ! Tomorrow will be the proof as I try to get the important structural welds on the trailer tongue completed and get the frame primed and painted. My wife just got a new Tdi and the trailer has to find its rightful resting place - OUTSIDE !
Back then, I used an AC welder my dad had built by hand when he was an apprentice electrician. It had a bit of an unusual design, since the output was varied by inserting part of the core into a cutout in the transformer frame. So basically a variable resistor was introduced into the magnetic circuit as opposed to the electrical circuit. It was capable of astonishing current, but it made a really loud hum (too much clearance on the moving core) and it would spin the utility meter like there was no tomorrow.
Fast forward almost 30 years, 20 something domestic relocations and 2 major international relocations and I find myself worse equipped than what I was before I was a teenager. In the last few years I have been trying to correct that deficit and have meanwhile added a reasonable mill, a lathe project and a hydraulic surface grinder from the government "strategic reserve" to my collection. I tried an AC buzz box from one of the big box stores, but my impression is that you need smaller than 1/16" electrodes to make a bead with one of those and it will quit after 3" of that tiny weld.. Next attempt was when building my first trailer (which I needed to move) and I got a Lincoln Pro 100 (biggest one at Menards at the time). The little mig welder seems happy if all you will do is weld sheet metal all day, but when I started building a 7000lb gross weight tandem axle trailer this spring I realized that something better was required.
Finally after much procrastination and "priority juggling" (I did add a Bobcat B200 TLB to the collection in April) and with the summer apparently just arriving I took the plunge today and relieved someone of a good piece of "old iron"
360lb brute:
vs
I don't have a 230V supply in my garage or outside, so until alternative arrangements are made, I am powering it with my Robin Generator. That neccesitated a trip to Menards to find a suitable 4 pin plug. First attempt at hooking it up I only had 115V on the input, so some troubleshooting later I had it figured out. I also took the cover off to check the electrical connections inside and good thing I did. The "strain relief" had not been doing its job, and the cable had apparently been rotated through at least 2 full turns and a short was imminent. Fixed that problem and sleeved the cable with a piece of rubber hose to allow the strain relief clamp on the welder to grip properly.
So how does it weld ? Well, in my biased opinion.... beautifully ! Tomorrow will be the proof as I try to get the important structural welds on the trailer tongue completed and get the frame primed and painted. My wife just got a new Tdi and the trailer has to find its rightful resting place - OUTSIDE !
Looks like you now know better 
