johnrev
Member
- Messages
- 225
- Location
- Norfolk, UK
Just sold my Sip Autoplus on 'the bay' and was asked by buyers if it could use gasless wire. Made me think so I decided to have a go at converting my Topmig to gas/gasless before offering for sale.
As it turns out it's a pretty simple conversion so thought I'd detail it for anyone else wanting to do the same.
I had a head start as I'd already converted to a Euro torch and also fitted a dinse socket for the ground lead. I wanted to have the lead swapping on the front panel so fitted a second dinse socket next to the first. This second socket becomes the positive power lead connection so both positive and ground terminate at a dinse connector on the front panel.
Welding power to the torch is originally connected straight to the rectifier unit so this lead is disconnected at the torch connector and fitted to the new dinse socket. A new length of lead is then fitted to the torch connector in it's place and this becomes the 'wander lead' which exits through the front panel of the case and has a dinse plug fitted so it can plug into either of the sockets. In use the ground is either plugged into it's original socket and torch to the new one for gas shielding or these are swapped over for gasless.
Unfortunately that's not the end of it as the torch can now obviously be positive or negative but the trigger needs to provide a positive voltage to the electronics for the wirefeed motor etc. The trigger wires from a Euro torch are no problem as one feeds the circuit board and the other simply needs to be connected to a positive supply. The same point that the torch originally connected to on the rectifier is fine and simple to do by disconnecting from the torch power lead and reconnecting here.
This is not so easy if you have a fixed torch on your welder which has only one wire out at the machine end. There may be a simple way to fix this problem but you'd need to ask eddie49 or one of the other knowledgable guys on here about that.
My advice would be to swap to a Euro torch. The conversion is not too costly and the last torch I bought cost under £20 on EBay.
Anyway the result is way better than I expected. I bought a the cheapest reel of .8mm flux cored I could find (£9.99 for 1kg reel) just to try out the conversion and it is really very good. It is smokey but runs very smooth and lays a pretty decent weld with very little spatter. I've only run a couple of short tryouts on a bit of 3mm plated ms and just used the .8mm smooth feed roller I had in the Sip. I didn't eve
n change voltage or feed speed and just gave them a quick wire brushing afterwards. A bit of 'tuning' would probably improve the result but am happy with the welds. Should be a couple of pics below to look at.
John
As it turns out it's a pretty simple conversion so thought I'd detail it for anyone else wanting to do the same.
I had a head start as I'd already converted to a Euro torch and also fitted a dinse socket for the ground lead. I wanted to have the lead swapping on the front panel so fitted a second dinse socket next to the first. This second socket becomes the positive power lead connection so both positive and ground terminate at a dinse connector on the front panel.
Welding power to the torch is originally connected straight to the rectifier unit so this lead is disconnected at the torch connector and fitted to the new dinse socket. A new length of lead is then fitted to the torch connector in it's place and this becomes the 'wander lead' which exits through the front panel of the case and has a dinse plug fitted so it can plug into either of the sockets. In use the ground is either plugged into it's original socket and torch to the new one for gas shielding or these are swapped over for gasless.
Unfortunately that's not the end of it as the torch can now obviously be positive or negative but the trigger needs to provide a positive voltage to the electronics for the wirefeed motor etc. The trigger wires from a Euro torch are no problem as one feeds the circuit board and the other simply needs to be connected to a positive supply. The same point that the torch originally connected to on the rectifier is fine and simple to do by disconnecting from the torch power lead and reconnecting here.
This is not so easy if you have a fixed torch on your welder which has only one wire out at the machine end. There may be a simple way to fix this problem but you'd need to ask eddie49 or one of the other knowledgable guys on here about that.
My advice would be to swap to a Euro torch. The conversion is not too costly and the last torch I bought cost under £20 on EBay.
Anyway the result is way better than I expected. I bought a the cheapest reel of .8mm flux cored I could find (£9.99 for 1kg reel) just to try out the conversion and it is really very good. It is smokey but runs very smooth and lays a pretty decent weld with very little spatter. I've only run a couple of short tryouts on a bit of 3mm plated ms and just used the .8mm smooth feed roller I had in the Sip. I didn't eve
John
