Screwdriver
Member
- Messages
- 10,157
Hi. Bought this advertised as not working.
It was cheap enough to be worth a punt but turns out it's not a simple fix. Unit turns on, fan operates, some relays on the control board do their thing but the contactors do not operate.
Seller told me he lent it to a friend and it came back broken; the tip had burned off. So he bought a new tip with all new gubbins:
But it won't arc. I set the tip up as it should be and I understand this is a scratch start unit, the tip must be depressed to make a contact switch in the head to initiate the arc.
So with the air circuit seeming to work ok and the torch looking good, I held in one of the contactors (I only have two hands!) and the unit did fire up briefly. When I hold in the main contactor, the transformer hums, clearly this is not the way forwards but I guess the contactor itself is ok and it's the control which is faulty.
Looks pretty clean in there with no blackened crispy components though it has been dropped at some stage. The massive transformer has pushed out the bottom of the case by half an inch.
Is there a typical fault when this unit goes bang? Not looked at the rectifier yet (I'd need to disassemble it and get a meter on it). There is also a thermal cutout which I haven't seen or tested yet.
My main concern is that while everything seems to be ok, the contactor operating coil appears to be fed from a wire coming out of the massive transformer rather than from the control board.
Anyway, I only got it on the bench last night and will go have another look today. Any help greatly appreciated, I want to start making some more wood burning stoves and cutting/grinding is 90% of the effort.
Cheers
Screwdriver.
It was cheap enough to be worth a punt but turns out it's not a simple fix. Unit turns on, fan operates, some relays on the control board do their thing but the contactors do not operate.
Seller told me he lent it to a friend and it came back broken; the tip had burned off. So he bought a new tip with all new gubbins:
But it won't arc. I set the tip up as it should be and I understand this is a scratch start unit, the tip must be depressed to make a contact switch in the head to initiate the arc.
So with the air circuit seeming to work ok and the torch looking good, I held in one of the contactors (I only have two hands!) and the unit did fire up briefly. When I hold in the main contactor, the transformer hums, clearly this is not the way forwards but I guess the contactor itself is ok and it's the control which is faulty.
Looks pretty clean in there with no blackened crispy components though it has been dropped at some stage. The massive transformer has pushed out the bottom of the case by half an inch.
Is there a typical fault when this unit goes bang? Not looked at the rectifier yet (I'd need to disassemble it and get a meter on it). There is also a thermal cutout which I haven't seen or tested yet.
My main concern is that while everything seems to be ok, the contactor operating coil appears to be fed from a wire coming out of the massive transformer rather than from the control board.
Anyway, I only got it on the bench last night and will go have another look today. Any help greatly appreciated, I want to start making some more wood burning stoves and cutting/grinding is 90% of the effort.
Cheers
Screwdriver.