Clarke 135te

[Parm]

right lovely people

I have a new to me Clarke 135 te turbo, today it worked good for most of the day then on my last weld it decided to blow a fuse in the plug. Changed fuse and same again, changed fuse again and now every time I try to make an arc it blows fuse. Wire feed works, gas comes out of torch but it doesn't strike an arc.

It was late in the day and I haven't looked inside the case, what could it be, and where should I look for any faults, was a great little unit for me until it went wrong this evening

 

[Parm]

Its shortcircuiting probably or drawing too much amperage and popping the fuse...try blowing out the case (could be metal dust shorting across the contacts) does it do it on all settings or just the highest?

Same issues on all settings and all wire speeds, most annoying

 

[mike 109444]

Sounds like it might be the diode pack.
When you strike and arc, you are effectively "shorting" the out put of the welder (hence the welding wire melts!) but if the machine draws to much current (maybe due to a shorted transformer or diode pack) then something has to give, namely the fuse. If the machine had a contactor then you could have disconnected the diode pack and triggered the torch. If it then blew fuse it would be the transformer. But as it does not have a contactor then not so easy to test just transformer. Only way would be to disconnect diode pack and then remove from pcb the connectors 3 and 4 and connect these to a mains breakout box, but this is all getting a bit dangerous as the transformer would have an un-switched supply feeding it. Depends how confident you are with electricity ??

 

[Parm]

I'm confident with electrikery but just didn't have time this evening to mess about, will have a look over the next few days