Today I acquired...........

[Jim Davey]

Found out today that the Fronius I picked up a couple of weeks back and posted up a few pics of in this thread is going to cost between £500-700 to repair. On top of the purchase price that's going to have to go on the rental fleet yo earn a few quid back before I can afford to sell that I reckon. Can't win em all. Just goes to show, do a weld test before parting with the money wherever possible or this can be a lot more likely.

 

[Spark plug]

Found out today that the Fronius I picked up a couple of weeks back and posted up a few pics of in this thread is going to cost between £500-700 to repair. On top of the purchase price that's going to have to go on the rental fleet yo earn a few quid back before I can afford to sell that I reckon. Can't win em all. Just goes to show, do a weld test before parting with the money wherever possible or this can be a lot more likely.

What was up with it then if you don't mind me asking, that's a lot for repair

 

[Jim Davey]

Lots of labour to track down the problem. Unfortunately fixing it is beyond my skill I've had to give it to a specialist but tracking down a spurious fault with the charging circuit on a welder that will only run for 10 seconds and then needs 10-15 minutes switched off to recover before it will turn on again for another few seconds has been taxing. As far as I'm aware there is a semiconductor of some description that regulates the voltage supplied to the two big capacitors that form part of the charging circuit. This isn't charging sufficiently so the set powers down until it recovers enough to try again. But the circuit wends its merry way between at least 5 PC boards and makes an accurate diagnosis very difficult and not cheap. Thankfully the fault isn't with either inverter board as they contain many special parts not available to aftermarket repairers or anyone who's name doesn't end in Fronius for that matter and would have to come from Fronius only if needed at great expense as its complete boards of nothing from them (like most companies to be fair) which would effectively write it off.

 

[Bill Edwards]

Perhaps i'm somewhat uneducated on these things, but that sounds to be extremely complicated for a charging circuit!
Glad it wasn't me trying to figure it all out.

 

[Wendelspanswick]

Not free but only £10, 3 lengths of 120mm box, 2500mm long. Advertised on eBay as mezzanine supports and only a short distance for me to collect.

Went and picked up my lengths of box today and the seller wasn't happy, "a proper bargain you got there, I was hoping you wouldn't show up" was his comment!
As an added bonus the base plates are 450mm square 12mm plate.
Just got to decide what to use it for, support posts for the full length porch on the barn or a post whacker to go on the tractor.
Shame I can't find more bargains like that.

 

[T0rnado69]

Went and picked up my lengths of box today and the seller wasn't happy, "a proper bargain you got there, I was hoping you wouldn't show up" was his comment!

don't that just put a BIG smile on ya face lol

 

[Kayos]

If you sell on eBay you take the risk of it going cheap

Good find on the steel, could do with some myself

 

[Jim Davey]

Perhaps i'm somewhat uneducated on these things, but that sounds to be extremely complicated for a charging circuit!
Glad it wasn't me trying to figure it all out.

Fronius don't do many things the easy way.

 

[Bill Edwards]

Fronius don't do many things the easy way.

Presumably they offer a repair service - I shudder to think what sort of prices could be charged.

 

[Tom Orrow L]

So I got myself a plasma cutter.. Hypertherm powermax 380 DV with PAC 110 torch in perfect working condition, little worse for wear on the outside but I ain't bothered about that. £87.. Can't go wrong can I? Guy had it advertised on ebay as PLAZMA CUTTER with not much information but I took a risk and it's paid off

Once I'd bought it I thought, now I need a compressor to power it.. Hopped on ebay & found a guy selling a SIP airmate that'll do perfect for it. He'd had it on ebay an hour, was around 2 mile down the road from me & he wanted £35 for it in perfect working order.
Snatched his hand off, picked it up after work tonight.

£112 for a working Hypertherm Powermax & compressor, chuffed to bits.

I've been told these Powermax 380's were made in Miller's (yes, Miller) factories in America for Hypertherm & that the internal's are exactly the same as the current Hypertherm Powermax 30 DV but the consumables last an awful lot longer on the older machines. It'll cut around 8MM/ 10MM Clean at 120PSI

Somebody give me some idea's for projects with my plasma

 

[T0rnado69]

cnc table for your hypertherm

well thats you sorted for a good 6 to 12 months.

yes they do say its good to search for things that are mis spelt

 

[Wedg1e]

Lots of labour to track down the problem.

We got a £20,000 x-ray set in at work this morning, "No power" was the stated fault. Checked the obvious then opened the control panel. Found a blown fuse, changed it, power on, fuse blew quite spectacularly (when the glass cracks you know it's a good one!). Me and one of the guys peered hopefully into the gubbins and then the other guy points to a faint smudge next to a semiconductor.
We lift this fast-recovery diode off its heatsink and a good chunk has been vapourised from its mounting tab. Odd, we thought, so we pulled the PCB and gave it the once-over. The only thing we found was a bridge rectifier with one blown diode. Replaced that, tested the crispy fast-recovery diode which seemed OK, thought 'Ah to hell with it', put it back together with a new fuse and 18 minutes later we had 200kV of radiation rattling the monitors
We hadn't even opened the workshop manual. Best guess is that sudden drop in temperature had caused condensation to form on the cold heatsinks inside the panel. The bridge rectifies the mains direct and that's then used in the primary side of a switched-mode with the fast-recovery diode protecting the power MOSFET. We suspect that the condensation had allowed the rectified mains to track from the normally-insulated diode tab to ground, blowing its tab apart and causing a surge that fried the bridge... which then blew the fuse.
Wish they were all that simple...

 

[Jim Davey]

Do you want a job?

 

[TechnicAl]

We got a £20,000 x-ray set in at work this morning, "No power" was the stated fault. Checked the obvious then opened the control panel. Found a blown fuse, changed it, power on, fuse blew quite spectacularly (when the glass cracks you know it's a good one!). Me and one of the guys peered hopefully into the gubbins and then the other guy points to a faint smudge next to a semiconductor.
We lift this fast-recovery diode off its heatsink and a good chunk has been vapourised from its mounting tab. Odd, we thought, so we pulled the PCB and gave it the once-over. The only thing we found was a bridge rectifier with one blown diode. Replaced that, tested the crispy fast-recovery diode which seemed OK, thought 'Ah to hell with it', put it back together with a new fuse and 18 minutes later we had 200kV of radiation rattling the monitors
We hadn't even opened the workshop manual. Best guess is that sudden drop in temperature had caused condensation to form on the cold heatsinks inside the panel. The bridge rectifies the mains direct and that's then used in the primary side of a switched-mode with the fast-recovery diode protecting the power MOSFET. We suspect that the condensation had allowed the rectified mains to track from the normally-insulated diode tab to ground, blowing its tab apart and causing a surge that fried the bridge... which then blew the fuse.
Wish they were all that simple...

Of course

 

[Windy Miller]

We got a £20,000 x-ray set in at work this morning, "No power" was the stated fault. Checked the obvious then opened the control panel. Found a blown fuse, changed it, power on, fuse blew quite spectacularly (when the glass cracks you know it's a good one!). Me and one of the guys peered hopefully into the gubbins and then the other guy points to a faint smudge next to a semiconductor.
We lift this fast-recovery diode off its heatsink and a good chunk has been vapourised from its mounting tab. Odd, we thought, so we pulled the PCB and gave it the once-over. The only thing we found was a bridge rectifier with one blown diode. Replaced that, tested the crispy fast-recovery diode which seemed OK, thought 'Ah to hell with it', put it back together with a new fuse and 18 minutes later we had 200kV of radiation rattling the monitors
We hadn't even opened the workshop manual. Best guess is that sudden drop in temperature had caused condensation to form on the cold heatsinks inside the panel. The bridge rectifies the mains direct and that's then used in the primary side of a switched-mode with the fast-recovery diode protecting the power MOSFET. We suspect that the condensation had allowed the rectified mains to track from the normally-insulated diode tab to ground, blowing its tab apart and causing a surge that fried the bridge... which then blew the fuse.
Wish they were all that simple...

Yeah I thought it was that too!

 

[penfold]

Electronics failure diagnosis for dummies; which bits have exploded and/or had the smoke escape from them?

 

[roofman]

So I got myself a plasma cutter.. Hypertherm powermax 380 DV with PAC 110 torch in perfect working condition, little worse for wear on the outside but I ain't bothered about that. £87.. Can't go wrong can I? Guy had it advertised on ebay as PLAZMA CUTTER with not much information but I took a risk and it's paid off

Once I'd bought it I thought, now I need a compressor to power it.. Hopped on ebay & found a guy selling a SIP airmate that'll do perfect for it. He'd had it on ebay an hour, was around 2 mile down the road from me & he wanted £35 for it in perfect working order.
Snatched his hand off, picked it up after work tonight.

£112 for a working Hypertherm Powermax & compressor, chuffed to bits.

I've been told these Powermax 380's were made in Miller's (yes, Miller) factories in America for Hypertherm & that the internal's are exactly the same as the current Hypertherm Powermax 30 DV but the consumables last an awful lot longer on the older machines. It'll cut around 8MM/ 10MM Clean at 120PSI

Somebody give me some idea's for projects with my plasma

Good find but are you sure it takes 120PSI??....That seems very high for any plasma

 

[Tom Orrow L]

Good find but are you sure it takes 120PSI??....That seems very high for any plasma

From what I've seen on the setup video that is the PSI for max severance cut but I've not had chance to properly mess about yet.
The lowest I think it needs is 60PSI, what's the average you need or a typical plasma?

 

[Wendelspanswick]

55 to 65psi on my CUT50.

 

[roofman]

65 PSI on my R-Tech