Hi
I recently bought myself a new Clarke CSW13T 13KW Spot Welder as I'm doing a lot of replacement body panels sills/door pillars etc and really fancied having a nice tidy original looking finish, instead of having to drill all the holes and plug welding plus the cleaning job after normal mig welds. I can do it ok, just find it a bit of a fiddly thing to do with a mig welder and the finish sometimes doesn't look the best.
I had a 16A plug fitted in the garage by local sparky and got to trying a few test patches, including an old section of the sill I cut off, the upper part that wasn't rusty. Cut it and half and joined the two pieces back to back. Firstly though, I tried a strength test using a few cut offs to try and "twist" one spot weld apart, got not bad results after a few tries. Then went on to the sill join. Again first few looked like slight burn through but then got neater (Adjusted timing settings). I then tried breaking it apart and as expected the first few eventually gave way, but it stopped 3 or 4 in and the metal started tearing where I was trying to prize it apart.
A couple of things I want to ask though. When you're setting the gap, does it need to be just touching the 2 pieces of metal when the clamps are shut, should the 2 plates you're going to join be able to slide through the gap with minimal drag only, similar to gapping a plug or valves?
Sometimes the welder trips the RCD, other times it will fly along and do plenty of welds without any fuss, not sure if this is something to do with the metal I'm using, is it effectively "shorting" the machine so it trips out?
There's also a pulse width setting on the machine, is it worthwhile using this and why/when would you use it? I tried it and never really noticed much if any difference.
Finally, maintenance, how can I clean the tips without damaging them?
Cheers
OldMig
I recently bought myself a new Clarke CSW13T 13KW Spot Welder as I'm doing a lot of replacement body panels sills/door pillars etc and really fancied having a nice tidy original looking finish, instead of having to drill all the holes and plug welding plus the cleaning job after normal mig welds. I can do it ok, just find it a bit of a fiddly thing to do with a mig welder and the finish sometimes doesn't look the best.
I had a 16A plug fitted in the garage by local sparky and got to trying a few test patches, including an old section of the sill I cut off, the upper part that wasn't rusty. Cut it and half and joined the two pieces back to back. Firstly though, I tried a strength test using a few cut offs to try and "twist" one spot weld apart, got not bad results after a few tries. Then went on to the sill join. Again first few looked like slight burn through but then got neater (Adjusted timing settings). I then tried breaking it apart and as expected the first few eventually gave way, but it stopped 3 or 4 in and the metal started tearing where I was trying to prize it apart.
A couple of things I want to ask though. When you're setting the gap, does it need to be just touching the 2 pieces of metal when the clamps are shut, should the 2 plates you're going to join be able to slide through the gap with minimal drag only, similar to gapping a plug or valves?
Sometimes the welder trips the RCD, other times it will fly along and do plenty of welds without any fuss, not sure if this is something to do with the metal I'm using, is it effectively "shorting" the machine so it trips out?
There's also a pulse width setting on the machine, is it worthwhile using this and why/when would you use it? I tried it and never really noticed much if any difference.
Finally, maintenance, how can I clean the tips without damaging them?
Cheers
OldMig