Wire arcing out itself?

[robbo]

hey guys, i recently purchased a brand new Clarke 175te.

in my workshop ive also got an older Clarke 185, which the 175 was supposed to replace.

i can weld sufficiantly amd have never had any problems with my equiptment, when welding with the older 185 my welds are fine. When i weld with the 175 the wire seems to arc back upon itself towards the tip when welding, meaning really patchy welds, ive tried different wire speeds and power settings to no avail. it also makes a strange buzzing noise rather than the normal welding noise im used to.

heres a pic after its arced itself back up the wire.

thanks

 

[Archie]

I would say a simple case of too much power and/or not enough wire feed. That balling tends to be caused by the arc striking and then the wire burning back because it's not being fed into the arc quickly enough.

 

[shenion]

My Clarke did that with the spring in the swan neck distorted. Once it got hot the wire would bind and stutter.

If power seems low, it could be one of the rectifiers has opened up.

Try a larger tip, I found some wires are a bit large and tips a bit small.

Also, too short a stickout will cause the tip to overheat.

 

[robbo]

thanks shenion i'll try a larger tip tomorrow.

Power isnt afftected in any way, nor have i been using too short of a stickout.

thanks a lot for your comments i'll report back tomorrow night.

 

[robbo]

I would say a simple case of too much power and/or not enough wire feed. That balling tends to be caused by the arc striking and then the wire burning back because it's not being fed into the arc quickly enough.

hey archie thanks for your comments, i tried upping the power and reducing the wire feed speed but it still did it either way

 

[Archie]

hey archie thanks for your comments, i tried upping the power and reducing the wire feed speed but it still did it either way

Oh well. At least that rules out the obvious potential probs!

 

[shenion]

hey archie thanks for your comments, i tried upping the power and reducing the wire feed speed but it still did it either way

Sounds like it should be the other way around, reduce power or increase wire speed.

If it works fine for 5 seconds or so, I'd suspect the swan neck liner is distorted. I screwed up mine witha bad reg, it would work a while than gas flow would slow to a trickle. Ended up overheating the neck liner.

If you have a plastic liner, the plastic scrapings will collect at the neck liner and stick when they get hot.

 

[Archie]

Sounds like it should be the other way around, reduce power or increase wire speed.

Good point. Didn't spot that!

 

[robbo]

my apologies i meant the other way around reducing the power and upping the speed it arcs on the metal im trying to weld for less than a second then the pool shoots back up the wire.