I have a Clarke 131E arc welder for about a year, and was getting really frustrated with it. I would always get lumpy welds because the electrode melts too fast, even when I turn the amperage down; you could see big gobs of electrodes drips, like water droplets. The welds were always with very little to no penetration. Couple of days ago, I swapped the cables to see what happens, and I was getting beautiful welds. The base metal was heating up nicely and the electrode deposits were more controllable.
Since the owner's manual doesn't indicate whether this machine is AC or DC, I wrote to the US distributor for Clarke and they said it is an AC output machine, but they also said I could swap polarity depends on the type of electrode used. That baffled me. As far as I know, if it's an AC machine, polarity shouldn't matter, but why did they say I could swap polarities based on the type of electrode?
Below is the schematic of the welder from the owner's manual:
Since the owner's manual doesn't indicate whether this machine is AC or DC, I wrote to the US distributor for Clarke and they said it is an AC output machine, but they also said I could swap polarity depends on the type of electrode used. That baffled me. As far as I know, if it's an AC machine, polarity shouldn't matter, but why did they say I could swap polarities based on the type of electrode?
Below is the schematic of the welder from the owner's manual: