Hi all, I have a problem!

[Bill Harrison]

Well guys n gals I appear to have gotten somewhere but am not quite there yet.

Before I go on I would like to thank all of you for your input and especially Jim Davey who very patiently talked me through some areas to investigate.

After talking to Jim he had a strong feeling that the problem was torch related, even though I had tried 3 on the machine with the same results.

I set to stripping out the Eurotorch socket and found that even though the connections looked good they were actually loose and had signs of arcing. I removed the connection, cleaned them up and put it back together.
THIS DIDNT WORK!!!

Next I removed the full wire feed rollers and the Eurotorch socket. I didnt find anything here except some discolouration of the socket where the wire passes through.

I cleaned this up and rebuilt.

Suddenly I can weld again!

I dont know what is going on, but I have 4 torches here, 2 of which used to work and are in virtually new condition yet the one that is now connected and working has been borrowed to me by a friend and has clearly had a hard life.

I am going to replace the Eurotorch socket and see what happens.

 

[Jim Davey]

You are very welcome Bill.

 

[dan.taylor.1]

Bill, i don't suppose you took any pictures? Shall strip mine down this week and have a look.

 

[Bill Harrison]

No Dan, no pictures.
I have had another delve about tonight trying to figure why these 2 seemingly good torches are unable to weld, and to be honest I cant pin it to anything.

X File me thinks lol

 

[Questions]

Try the torches on a welder that is know to weld good, there may be something
wrong with the two small pins on the torches, they could have been damaged where
one can not readily see, may be as a result of arcing or insulation damage owing to
arcing or heat.
I never had trouble with a torch, so never stripped one, but have heard of broken wires
causing intermittent problems.

Either way, good to heat your able to weld again

 

[Bill Harrison]

Some more experimenting today and again I might have made progress.

It was bothering me that swapping so many torches was not sorting the problem and the fact that only 1 torch would work.

My set has a connector on the front that is for the stick welding electrode to plug into and this is common to the mig euro connector so I plugged a lead in to this and exposed the swan neck as near to the shroud of the torch as I could and I clamped the "Floatinf stick feed" onto it. This was to bypass the torch feed in order to see if that was breaking down under load conditions.

The result was the same, the wire stuck inside the tip as soon as it was made live and an arc attempted to be struck.

I then took the torch that does work and swapped its tip onto my jury rigged set up and hey ho we can weld, so I removed my "Piggyback" feed and we can still weld.

I swapped torches around again and can only weld with a setup that has the same tip transferred to it.

I have been out today and ordered a pack of new 0.6mm tips and will keep the forum up to date with the results when I have had a chance to use them.

I suspect that because I am using 0.6mm wire in a 4 Metre long torch I am having feed problems with the least little bit of resistance causing the wire to stick and minutely weld to the tip.

Further suspiscion is that if I were to swap back up to 0.8mm wire or bigger then it would be stiff enough to be pushed through the liner and tip without hanging up and sticking inside the tip.

Time will tell.

 

[Rig Pig]

0.6 wire is a pain, it seems to birdcage for fun I only ever use 0.8.

 

[outofthefire]

Almost certainly the problem, 4 mtrs is a long way to push .6mm it's like trying to push ally wire. Does your welder have twin wire feed wheels something else you really need with a 4 metre torch, where about in Yorkshire are you i'm in Leeds

 

[Bill Harrison]

Almost certainly the problem, 4 mtrs is a long way to push .6mm it's like trying to push ally wire. Does your welder have twin wire feed wheels something else you really need with a 4 metre torch, where about in Yorkshire are you i'm in Leeds

I am in Redcar.

I have been today and ordered some 0.6mm tips just to confirm my suspscions but I tend to agree that thinking about it I will swap to 0.8mm wire and I reckon my problem will disappear.

I had dropped down to 0,6 because I was doing light stuff and trying to burn in the bigger wire was blowing holes in the job so I thought if I dropped to smaller wire I could use less amps and it would be easier.

I will keep my eye out for a 2 or 3 metre MB15 torch for the more delicate work.

 

[dan.taylor.1]

My set has a roll with 0.8 and 1.0 on it so maybe check yours actually has a 0.6mm groove on the roll?!

 

[dan.taylor.1]

I should also point out before this issue occurred on my set it had no problem pushing 0.8mm down a 5m torch whatsoever. I use 1.0mm now as most of my stuff is 6mm or more thick.

 

[Questions]

A 4 mtr torch is really too long for light wire, it will act just like you mention, one time it will
feed, then stick in the liner then shoot onto the metal sticking its self, free it up and it will
just keep on repeating because there is too much coiling and uncoiling taking place in the
liner as the wire snags and releases into the metal again, always use as short a torch as
possible, I used to never go above 3.5 meter, but don't see too many this size now, since
murex stopped making them I moved to binzel, or the cheaper parweld pro version of the
binzel, and they don't come in 3.5 mtr, makes me think my cold starts may have something
to do with this too, it was the 3.5 mtr torches I used on my Cebora migs that were very good
starters.

 

[outofthefire]

I am in Redcar.

A bit too far to pop over to give you a hand. Like Dan says check the grooves on your feed wheels if it's an industrial duty machine i'd guess you don't have a .6 groove. The other thing that will help is to keep your torch lead as straight as possible any bends and curves in it will increase resistance of the wire in the liner making it worse.

 

[dan.taylor.1]

Had a poke about in mine yesterday and this morning, no discolouration anywhere, all main bits are tight, the part of the euro connector in the machine that screws into the main block and has the sliding brass tube for the wire to feed through was a tad loose so I've stripped the lot and cleaned it all up, swapped some ring terminals that were a bit iffy and I'm about to test it. Hopefully it's something I've not seen but have fixed.

 

[dan.taylor.1]

Well it appears to be welding fine. Can't complain at that bead...