Welderfix UK here to help....

[Welderfix UK]

Just wanted to introduce myself and say a courteous hello.

As you can probably guess, we are a small group of electronics engineers based in N.Yorkshire who specialise in inverter and high frequency welder repairs.

I’m not registering to promote that side of things however; rather I’d like to help YOU fix your own welder with technical help via this forum. I'm a great ambassador of helping the community in the spirit that these forums are intended, so if you are handy with a soldering iron and have a basic understanding of electronics, I’m sure we can assist

Alternatively, if you have any questions about how your inverter welder works, or just want to know anything about electronics in general, PM me or post on here.


Paul.

 

[rtbcomp]

Welcome to the forum.

Whilst any electronics help is gratefully received, we can't allow businesses to place advertising links, especially on the first post!

 

[Welderfix UK]

Got into trouble on my first post - apologies! Completely sincere about my intentions though.

 

[gordon stephenson]

Welcome Paul. I'm sure any help and assistance you can give to our members regarding the repair and understanding of their electronic equipment will be gratefully accepted,

 

[DrNik]

welcome along, dont worry about getting into trouble, i do quite well at that too

 

[Welderfix UK]

Hahaha! Thanks all.

 

[madkayaker]

Hello and welcome. Inverter repair information will be great fully received. Are you able to get electronics diagrams and the like for the popular inverters?

 

[Welderfix UK]

Depends on manufacturer, the far east imports are notoriously difficult to get any schematics for (probably because all they ever seem to do is copy other peoples designs)!

Most people can suss the non-inverter welders pretty easily as they tend to be mostly 'mechanical failures' such as contactors, switches, relays etc or the occasional rectifier failure and I realise there are quite a few electrically competent people on here already.

The inverter stuff is more complicated so hoping this is where we can be of real value on the forum. We have been involved with switch mode psu design since the late 1950's so we sure do know them pretty well

 

[Welderfix UK]

Maybe the mods should move this particular bit out of the intro section and into a thread called "SIP weld mate 140 repair" so that others can benefit??

 

[rtbcomp]

Beat you to it!

http://www.mig-welding.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?p=453120#post453120

 

[mike os]

Maybe the mods should move this particular bit out of the intro section and into a thread called "SIP weld mate 140 repair" so that others can benefit??

ah so he does know his stuff then

 

[Justme]

Whats the score on running an inverter welder (or plasma cutter) from:

a generator?

or

a battery powered pure sine wave inverter?

Are the rumours true that its a bad idea for the welder & the genny or that the PSW inverter will fry due to the feed back?

 

[Jim_gsxr1000]

Yeh don't worry about it I get my fair share of trouble normally starts off me suggesting something daft, dangerous or illegal and the mods delete it for the greater good inverter repair help is always a good thing!

 

[mike 109444]

Paul were you the chap I was referring to in the post on the SIP 140?

 

[nickk]

well done for offering free help what a service ! hope the mods' can view it this way-they can be hard to please @ times

 

[Welderfix UK]

Mike - no not the same person. We are ex-Farnell power supply engineers.

Nick - appreciate your sentiments. Some people do come on here and just blatently advertise to try and gain easy sales which is hardly in the spirit of a community forum, so you can understand where they are coming from. There is definitely a judgement to be made on how professional services conduct themselves. My personal oppinion is that if they are not willing to help people for free then they shouldn't be here for free!

Justme - This is a good question. There is no reason at all why an inverter welder would work any less well from a quality generator or battery sine wave inverter. In fact they tend to be more suitable than other reactive loads because inverter welders have a high power factor. This means that the apparent power and the real power drawn from the generator are almost the same.

I may be getting a little too technical here, but one of the main reasons people trip up on generator sizing is that they do not allow for the apparent power rating of the load, which on a conventional welder can be much higher then the real power in watts. For example a 3kW welder might actually take 4kVA in apparent power so the generator must be sized to cope with 4kVA.

An inverter welder rated at 3kW is likely to be also rated about the same in kVA so it makes matching them to generators easier.

All welders by their nature are of course very 'surgy' in the way they draw power so you need to ensure you are using a quality gen set. You could make the argument that inverter welders are more susceptible to a poorly regulated ac input such as you might find with a cheap import generator or sine wave inveter, but that's the only drawback I can think of.

 

[KemppiFrog]

Wish you had been around when my Italian inverter Tig went phutt. Since dissapeared into the second guy who couldn't fix it. Problem on the main board, AKA, dunno what is wrong.
KF