Clarke 150en turbo amperage adjustment

[fuff66uk]

Knowing me this is a stupid idea but i would welcome opinions please
I have the clarke 150en turbo mig as in title ,i was wondering if i could lower the amperage output by plugging the welder into a dimmer socket but then realised that this would slow the wire feed motor down too,so do you think this might work to any degree ?

 

[mike 109444]

Dimmers are not rated high enough to take the power drawn by a welder. If you were to lower the power (voltage) your wire feed is variable so you would just turn it up more. Are you having problems welding thin sheet? See tutorals on home page. You could also take a look at adding an inductor and or capacitor combination (does the 150 have either?). If you can get your hans on one, you could always try a 240 to 110 (yellow box type) make up an adapter lead (110 plug to 240 socket) and then you have halved the power goin to the welder! You might find you need one of the VERY big yellow boxes if you are drawing lots of power (they have a cut out on them).
ps get on with that consol.....

 

[fuff66uk]

Lol it's because of the consul i'm wanting to sort the welder Mike,i had thought about the yellow box route but wasn't sure if it would work

 

[mike 109444]

Do you think you have a fault/problem with the welder or is it a lack of experence?
Just looked at the MM site and see that the 150 models go down to 30 on lowest setting which should be ok for thin car metal work. Have you got to the stage of lovley welds on the bench with nice new metal but when crawing roung on cold concret at some strange angle trying to weld new bit to iffy metal...... Welcome to the world of classic (and modern) car welding

 

[fuff66uk]

I think it's more me than the welder tbh Mike,i think i'm as rusty as the consul lol

 

[keith19]

I've found half the problems of welding new metal to old classics is thinking that the parent metal you've cut back to will just about do. Often it won't because the back of the metal may be pitted, and the parent metal just dissolves when you put the arc on it.
"If in doubt, cut it out" Is good advice.
Pro resto shops take out the whole panel if there's any doubts, and often this is easier and quicker than just patching. Tends to be more costly in cash, though.

 

[fuff66uk]

Tried an old dimmer socket i had today,it lasted about a second The strange thing is i swapped the leads over on the welder just as an experiment,it was set up for gasless,so i swapped as if i was using gas but kept gasless wire in,result a perfect weld with no blow through and good penetration,strange