Newbie: Funny noise while welding

[rngDeadeye]

Hi

Extreme newbie here.

This has happened before but I just upped the wire speed and it seemed fine but it did it again yesterday when changing from the lowest setting on my Clarke 135 for butt joining a floor section, to the 2nd but highest setting to plug weld the floor into the chassis rail.

Rather than sounding like bacon frying, it sounds like an "electrocution" sound - almost like the cartoon sound of Bugs Bunny getting fried by an electric wire. Like a windy buzz.

I hope this makes sense, any ideas? So far as I can tell, the wire-speed hasn't changed and it's already at 8 out of 10.

 

[mike 109444]

Welcome rngDeadeye. If you have upped the power but not upped the wire feed (might only be a very small amount needed) then you are not feeding wire into the weld pool quick enough. This could be causing the noise you are getting. As the clarke is not synegetic (gawd know how it's spelt!) Where by as you up or down the power on some welders they automaticly adjust the wire feed to match (well that's my understanding of it).
PS the astra looked ok on the tow truck! Then you went and took it off.... : )

 

[chunkolini]

Synergetic?
Why dont they just say self adjusting wire speed?
Does sound like a probable cause of the noise.

 

[Sean]

dirty tip causing the wire to bind?

Chuncolini, synergistic sounds better in the brochure makes it sound like it was made by people with 'ologys.

 

[rngDeadeye]

I thought it was supposed to be ...... to adjust the wire speed based on the settings...

Upping the wire speed did in fact solve it but there's a hell of a jump from 2/min to 2/max compared to 1/max to 2/min.

 

[h3rman]

I thought it was supposed to be ...... to adjust the wire speed based on the settings...

Upping the wire speed did in fact solve it but there's a hell of a jump from 2/min to 2/max compared to 1/max to 2/min.

The manual seems to be all wrong, I bought a Clarke 151TE and it says it is supposed to adjust wire speed automaticall and the knob is just for "fine tuning", which seems to be incorrect.

Also, the power settins in the manual are wrong, they say it goes 1 min, 2 min, 3 min, 1 max, 2 max, 3 max. Where as it actually goes 1 min, 1 max, 2 min, 2 max, 3 min, 3 max.