Which welder?

[overider]

I have the Clarke 151 TE this has the knurled feed, I have never experienced any problems with the feed. The knurled feed roller has an adjustable pressure roller so all you do is screw it onto the drive wheel until the wire starts to feed.

http://www.machinemart.co.uk/shop/produ ... ig-welders

[bigginger]

I was looking at my 150 the other day, and saw that it was knurled for 0.6 wire and not for 0.8 (or the other way round, can't remember)

[dp]

I read somewhere about fixing the wire feed on SIPs, maybe even on this forum. Let's have a look....

http://www.mig-welding.co.uk/sip-wirefeed.htm

Better pics and more detail here
http://www.mig-welding.co.uk/forum/show ... hp?p=42117

[eastona]

They're really good tips, I wish I'd seen this before doing my last lot of welding. I'm going to attempt a few of those before my next project (probably door bottoms, but it'll have to wait as apparently we've got loads of work to do in the house )

Andrew

[Judge]

............we've...........

[eastona]

LOL, good point there. It's the royal "we" that usually involves a trip to B&Q and a load of hard graft.

Andrew

[ASL642]

Oh.. if you're going I need 3 bags of gravel!!!

[MGFmad]

Interesting comments on the SIP welder, I have one myself and it was playing up last weekend (won't produce any power to weld even thin steel )

I have also had previous problems with the wire feed and when the above problem happened, I opened up the casing the see if anything obvious was wrong - one thing I did notice was how small the wire feed motor is - no wonder they give trouble - this thing would not look out of place in one of those small battery powered hand held fans

[polo2k]

Hey all, interesting to read what problems people have been having, Ive got a Clarke 150TE. I was having massive wire feed problems where it seemed that the wire feed wasnt strong enough. I read around on some welding forums and from that tried the following:
Power the welder up and try to get a couple of inches of wire out of the tip.
Shut the welder down and take the tension off the drive roller so it frees the wire.
Then hold the torch and walk away from the welder till the umbilical is straight.
When its straight then grab the welding wire with pliers and gently pull.
If it is tough to pull the welding wire off the reel and to the torch then you might need to change the liner in the umbilical.
There are plastic umbilicals that wear a lot but are very cheep. They can be damaged by rust abrasion, and collapse when bent.
Then there are Steel wound umbilicals which are a bit like a bit long spring, these dont collapse as easily and last longer, they are more expensive, but only a fiver or so.

They are a pain to fit but i sat the welder in the garage and walked the wire out of the torch for the same length as the new liner, Hold the wire taught (I wrapped the other end round a trolly jack). You should be able to work the old liner out and then swap for the new liner by sliding it back down the taught wire. (put the roller back down too to get the tension)

you will need to disassemble the torch to do this so you might as well do the swan neck liner too while your there for the 80p it costs, lol
I also changed the feed roller which helped as I am using 0.8wire and that size is knurled (not sure about the 0.6)

[linearaudio]

BMCECOSSE. You gave me some grand info about engine upgrading last night, so heres my thoughts on the SIP feed. It is AWFUL, but if you get a bit scientific, line the output collet up so the wire feeds out in a straight line from the rollers, on mine this meant opening out the hole to allow the output assy to be in the right place, also a reinforcing bracket as I found you could upset the alignment just by the angle the handset lead was bearing in use (a 4mm drill bit clamped in the collet in place of the liner end works quite nicely to "point" at the roller groove. Also the adjustable roller can skew round so it is not parallel to the drive roller. You can then wind the adjuster down all you like and it will still slip. My answer to that was to make a bracket to keep the unsupported end of the pivot rod square with its mounting. I was amazed how far out everything was from new- mine could never have worked properly from the factory! Alternatively- buy a secondhand Snap-on or similar through ebay and sell the SIP similarly to someone else!!

[nslocomotive2]

Well just to add I started out with a clarke 90EN, this was a good unit the welder was more than caperble and was gassles so easy to use, however involved thermal cutouts every half hour or so so i drank lot of tea.using it

Since it got stolen, I bought myself another clarke this time a 110EN turbo. The turbo basically means it has a longer run time as its fan cooled, this one however accepts the large 5kg spools which the smaller one didn't, so its cheaper to run, and it has the ability to be switched over to gas if I want it, I use gassles as it costs around the same to buy the flux cored wire as it does to buy the gas and wire, but I can use it outside or in a drafty location without using copious amounts of gas. check out brendas restoration on this forum for the results, from an inexperienced operator.

Having never used an sip I cant compare, but given the choice I wold go clarke cause I know it works, BTW my one has knurled wheel and I have never suffered from wire feed problems.

;-)

[rayofleamington]

I've been using a SIP 130 for 18 years and always had some trouble with it. The only way I got it to work to an acceptable level was to change from 0.6 to 0.8mm wire. This allows use of the knurled roller - this stopped all of the slipping problems I was getting.
When using a knurled roller I tend to change the wire liner fairly often to make sure it is still ok (the wire has marks from the roller so it could affect the liner).

For my current weldathon I've had to borrow a welder as mine stops working properly (no penetration) after about 10 to 20 minutes. I can hear the wre feed pulsing as it plays up, so it might just be a worn out feed motor (it's been used enough in 18 years!)

The one I've borrowed is a SIP 150. This comes with a box twice the size so it is much less pratical, but does have a platform for a big gas bottle. Incidentally, the big box contains no more than my smaller one - but it's more spread out.
I am struggling more with the 150 than I did with the 130 - maybe it's just the different wire (I've got very used to 0.8mm and the borrowed welder has 0.6). I'm now running the 0.6 wire with 0.8m tips to limit the amount of sticking.

At some point I'll be going for a replacement - and have already had quotes via a trader on the Mig forum mentioned. Most people recommended to go for 150 or 160 amps 'to be on the safe side', but I have a different opinion.
Bear in mind that if you only have 6 settings and a bigger range, then it is further between each setting, therefore harder to get the right one.
I've been very happy with 130 amps, and it is more than capable (when it works) to melt through 2.5mm plate.
Therefore if you only use it for cars, a smaller size box and smaller gaps between settings can be more useful than following the 'bigger is better' philosophy.