Farside
Badly Welded Man
- Messages
- 5,445
- Location
- Ireland
A couple of years ago I bought this brute, in the expectation that it would run all day long on what I'm likely to use it for and duty cycle wouldn't even enter into it. It was dirt cheap at the time, as most of these big old ex-industrial machines are, and I paid little more than scrap value for it (which also included the heavy leads thrown in, which was a bonus).
Apart from an initial plug-in to see if it actually worked at all, it's been sitting idle until now. I eventually got around to fitting a proper outlet to feed it from, as seen below.
Today, I had a stab at running it on 240V, firstly with a 2.5mm then a 3.2mm 6013 rods, results below...
Top bead is the 2.5mm, lower the 3.2mm. Just a quick and dirty test to see if there was anything usable to be had. I'm quite happy with that so far.
Of course, the OCVs are different to what's marked on the front panel - Low current range OCV of 77V is now 42V and High Current range OCV of 54 is now 30V.
A brief try of it on High (with the lowest OCV) yesterday, and while it worked, it took a little bit of poking to get an arc going, but it was ok once running.
Today, the results above are on the Higher OCV, the Low Current range. I'm just guessing at the actual current involved here, but both beads were run with the dial showing 175A, which I reckon is more like something between 105A and 120A in reality.
One thing I did notice, it's a very nice arc on it, quite controllable and just feels a lot better than any other plain buzzbox I've used - they were all of much smaller size, of course. What's likely coming into play here is the sheer size of the winding and it being of decent quality, not built down to a cut-throat price.
I must get some 4mm rods and see how it does. I'm going to ramp it up until the breaker trips just to see where the limits are. Originally, it would have run 6mm rods, but I really don't see it doing that on 240V input. I've got no need for 6mm anyway, so that doesn't bother me.
Apart from an initial plug-in to see if it actually worked at all, it's been sitting idle until now. I eventually got around to fitting a proper outlet to feed it from, as seen below.
Today, I had a stab at running it on 240V, firstly with a 2.5mm then a 3.2mm 6013 rods, results below...
Top bead is the 2.5mm, lower the 3.2mm. Just a quick and dirty test to see if there was anything usable to be had. I'm quite happy with that so far.
Of course, the OCVs are different to what's marked on the front panel - Low current range OCV of 77V is now 42V and High Current range OCV of 54 is now 30V.
A brief try of it on High (with the lowest OCV) yesterday, and while it worked, it took a little bit of poking to get an arc going, but it was ok once running.
Today, the results above are on the Higher OCV, the Low Current range. I'm just guessing at the actual current involved here, but both beads were run with the dial showing 175A, which I reckon is more like something between 105A and 120A in reality.
One thing I did notice, it's a very nice arc on it, quite controllable and just feels a lot better than any other plain buzzbox I've used - they were all of much smaller size, of course. What's likely coming into play here is the sheer size of the winding and it being of decent quality, not built down to a cut-throat price.
I must get some 4mm rods and see how it does. I'm going to ramp it up until the breaker trips just to see where the limits are. Originally, it would have run 6mm rods, but I really don't see it doing that on 240V input. I've got no need for 6mm anyway, so that doesn't bother me.