Clarke 150 Turbo temperature issue

[ibrooks]

Hi all,
Does the collective know of anything common where a Clarke 150 Turbo (the blue one) goes......... inconsistent as it's used? I'm guessing temperature related. It's a bit hard to describe but if I start using it from cold it's fine but then after a while welding it seems like it struggles to hold a consistent arc and gets very "splattery". It doesn't feel like a wire feed issue to me and tweaking the wire feed speed doesn't really seem to make a difference. Let it sit for a good few hours and it's fine again which screams temperature to me.

The gas valve seems to have become a bit "lazy" too as it keeps flowing for quite a while when you let off the trigger. I do like the sort of two stage trigger and have the feel of letting gas flow briefly before going to the second stage and feeding wire and striking the arc and then stopping the weld whilst letting the gas keep flowing for a second but it's got to a good few seconds even after the trigger is completely released. I'll sort this if I can get a resolution for the above problem.

I know it's a hobby machine (albeit at the upper end of hobby when I got it) and in the case of mine it's got to be 20 years old so it owes me nothing and has probably earned retirement but it's sort of an old friend and I don't want to just give up and buy another.

 

[Hutcho]

Check your earth ( return) inside the clamp - check all bolts are tight inside
The valve can be cleaned out - take torch apart and on the plunger spray some switch cleaner is what I use and keep working it - if that fails you can knock the plunger out but be careful as the spring will shoot off and never be seen again .

 

[ibrooks]

Cheers - I'll have a look at the earth connection inside it. The original clamp went long ago and it's on a decent one with a bolt connection so not a problem at that end.

 

[bourbon]

has it ever had a new liner in it?

 

[Gareth J]

Yep. I used to throw some abuse at the old 150T, 15A fusewire, ignoring any concept of duty cycle etc.

After a while welding flat out, it would behave horribly. As you describe really. If you pushed it further still, the thermal cutout would go and you'd have to wait for it to cool... Or blow compressed air in the back when impatient.

If you're getting these symptoms after a short while of welding on relatively low though, maybe something is up

 

[ibrooks]

Yep. I used to throw some abuse at the old 150T, 15A fusewire, ignoring any concept of duty cycle etc.

After a while welding flat out, it would behave horribly. As you describe really. If you pushed it further still, the thermal cutout would go and you'd have to wait for it to cool... Or blow compressed air in the back when impatient.

If you're getting these symptoms after a short while of welding on relatively low though, maybe something is up

It is actually just those symptoms but after noticeably less time than I used to get.

I'm generally working on cars and it would take an hour plus to get to that point in the past as your torch time doing that sort of stuff is actually relatively little as you cut, grind, shape, weld, cut, grind, shape, weld etc. In reality I'd only ever get this behaviour when welding a large panel in where all the prep work was done in advance and you were running a long continuous seam around the edge (OK doing a bit here and a bit there to avoid too much heat in one place but you get the idea). Nowadays I only get the first couple of welds in and then it goes dodgy.

I'll pull it apart and check the earth connection inside as well as making sure it's clean and nothing obvious but really am starting to come to the conclusion that it needs to be replaced.

 

[ibrooks]

has it ever had a new liner in it?

Yep.