SIP 130 gas mig poor welds

[nickjaxe]

Hi guys...owned my SIP 130 gas mig for a good few years...maybe about 10 years....its been a bit of a pain in that time with hit and miss results,

Sometimes it welds great and sometime just very erratic with poor penertration,

I can usualy improve the welds by removing the side panals and undoing and cleaning all the contacts...I fitted stainless steel nuts/bolts to replace the mild steel ones years ago...seems to slow down the corrosion buliding up on the contact joins with the alloy wire,

I fitted a wire linner to it years ago that seemd to help,

But I may only use the welder maybe once every 6 months or so and never know if its going to do a good job or not,

I use CO2 pub bottle gas...tried BOC mig gas with very little difference so I stopped my acount with them,

Any suggetions guys to improve its performance guys...I have concidered buying a new Clake welder but its hard to justifie with not using it very often.

Nick in Cheshire.

 

[mike 109444]

Hi Nick. Liners don't last forever! even if not used the wire in the liner will rust a bit. If on a tight budget a net curtain wire will do as a liner. One of the main issues with the SIP's seams to be the poor/inconsistent wire feed control. As the machine gets its power for the wire feed motor from the same source as the welding voltage then it can vary causing the wire feed motor to fluctuate meaning you may be adjusting it every so often. There are several threads dealing with this problem and instructions on how to separate the power for the feed motor and supply it from a dedicated supply. Search the SIP section of the forum. Ref the poor connections on the ally wires, try some vaseline on the connections to prevent oxidation.

 

[cracker666]

I've got a SIP 150 DP
Since doing the mods mentioned nove it has transformed the mig from poor to quite good.
Brace the wire rollers, do the laptop pus mod, replace the trimmer on the board and sort a New liner.
I use bags of silica gel and place them inside the mig helps I think.

Replace the tip and nozzle and use decent wire.
I'm using Lincoln wire, boc gas

 

[Jan]

I've got the Weldmate 130 and so far I've replaced the tip, liner (steel) and done the bracing mod. However I don't think I will need to add another power supply as I've 'broken' all the push fit electrical connectors inside the machine to cut through the corrosion. Before replacing them I then applied a modicum of petroleum jelly to keep out the air & moisture which appears (so far) to have completely cured the wire feed. Because it's a gas only machine I've also added a pair of Binzel connectors so that I can reverse the polarity to enable the use of gasless wire for outdoor use.

 

[TAITSIE]

I would rather have paid a bit more and got a welder that works straight away without having to spend time and money

 

[the snooper]

I've got the Weldmate 130 and so far I've replaced the tip, liner (steel) and done the bracing mod. However I don't think I will need to add another power supply as I've 'broken' all the push fit electrical connectors inside the machine to cut through the corrosion. Before replacing them I then applied a modicum of petroleum jelly to keep out the air & moisture which appears (so far) to have completely cured the wire feed. Because it's a gas only machine I've also added a pair of Binzel connectors so that I can reverse the polarity to enable the use of gasless wire for outdoor use.

the added power supply stops the wire speed fluctuating, the original supply comes from the welding transformer and as the arc alters when welding so does the supply to the motor

 

[Sean]

I would rather have paid a bit more and got a welder that works straight away without having to spend time and money

Thats all and good but most SIP users buy the machine before reading about the short comings on here. "Craptical Plastics" ran it as "Best Buy" for years and only last year some other classic car rag had the 130 as "best buy" in their pages ( suspect it was just a re hash of practical classics) My sip has worked better than a Cebora unit that i had for a while on extended loan and after the basic mods is an acceptable little welder. If i were to go shopping for a mig again Id probably steer clear but its certainly earned its money. Its all to easy to say "Skip it" "door stop" and smugly announcing "Well if i wanted a welder id save having to faff around with the mods and buy a XXXX branded welder at 2 or 3 times the price" none of which helps members who have come along seeking advice on what to do with a mis behaving Sip. The info in the Sip section is a fine example of the "on line community" actually helping each other and is absolutely brilliant

 

[TAITSIE]

I agree with what you are saying and I know that a lot of people are on a limited budget when first starting out and the Sip fits into that budget when bought secondhand but a lot of people also ask for advice on what to buy but then ignore the advice. Most people then modify the machine or if thats beyond them they buy a better welder, thats the point I was trying to make. I have used a Sip 130 that had not been modified and can see how a lot of people are put off welding because they think they cant weld.

 

[BChild]

SIP can weld but my advice (based on experience) is wire liner, roller brace mod and finer pot on the PCB and that's it - stop right there as all are cheap and quick and easy and don't take a lot of effort or money.

Anything more than that and it's a stupid slippery slope where a mod results in on one had an improvement and on the other hand highlights another issue

Separate wire feed transformer is great but then you have a really coarse wire feed control and it's hard to fine tune and runs on so you need a relay brake and then a different method of wire speed control

Euro torch conversion leads to issues with wire feed motor torque being poor so you end up fitting pulse width modulation control to compensate for the lack of torque in the wire feed motor

every positive mod has a negative impact....

 

[Jan]

So far I've only done some practice welds with it, but the wire now feeds smoothly even on the highest amperage setting. The only drawback I've had is on very thin metal. The stuff I've got to practice with is virtually all 2mm or over with just a couple of bits that are around 0.5-0.75mm which is far too thin for even the lowest setting. These are the ones that will blow through on any type of weld run except when flat to the work bench where the excess heat is drawn away from the work piece.

At the time I bought it I was working on a tight budget and assumed that a little work extra and money invested in it might see it working as it should. So far I seem to be right. Should the problem return I'm inclined to add the extra transformer, but I'll stick to a 20 volt one so that I can avoid the over voltage problems that arise from using a 24 volt transformer.

 

[skotl]

I know that this is a well-covered topic, but I am (in hindsight) glad of the efforts that I had to put into my SIP. Do I wish that I had just bought a Clarke in the first place? Well sure - it would have been nice to just work out of the box.
The upside, for me, though is that I know waaaaaaay more about my welder than I would have if I had lucked out with a fully-working-from-the-get-go model.
I (think that I) understand DC welding, wire feed control, wire feed hose, gas supply, torch assembly, etc,way more than I would have, otherwise.

But.... I have a background in electrical and electronic engineering, and an understanding of mechanical engineering (I'm a software wallah nowadays) - I wouldn't recommend a SIP to someone who was not comfortable at waving a soldering iron in amongst mains level electricity.

 

[BChild]

I know that this is a well-covered topic, but I am (in hindsight) glad of the efforts that I had to put into my SIP. Do I wish that I had just bought a Clarke in the first place? Well sure - it would have been nice to just work out of the box.
The upside, for me, though is that I know waaaaaaay more about my welder than I would have if I had lucked out with a fully-working-from-the-get-go model.
I (think that I) understand DC welding, wire feed control, wire feed hose, gas supply, torch assembly, etc,way more than I would have, otherwise.

But.... I have a background in electrical and electronic engineering, and an understanding of mechanical engineering (I'm a software wallah nowadays) - I wouldn't recommend a SIP to someone who was not comfortable at waving a soldering iron in amongst mains level electricity.

I'm occasionally glad of the effort I put into my SIP however I realize that I also have masochistic tendancies so may not be the best person to offer advice