Mike G wrote:

Most of the time my welding is OK, but sometimes for some reason it's not as
good as I would like. Maybe it's not my fault. :-)

No, I get that as well. I'm convinced there are certain days when
welding just isn't possible and we're best off putting the kit away and
heading down the pub.

Unless you know that the fan is temp controlled I would have assumed it
would run all the time and provide continuous cooling to increase the
duty cycle. Thats what it does on my Eland MIG 160 and thats a fairly
good machine. I had a 180 stick welder that was fan cooled also and it
ran all the time and never cutout, turred out that was because it didn't
have a thermal cutout.

Willy Eckerslyke wrote:

David Billington wrote:

I don't know the welder but a friend has a small MIG with 2 switches
to control 4 power levels and it appeared to stop working. After we
spent several hours checking the internals I realised that the power
switches effectively had a centre off, whether intentional in the
design or not, one had got knocked to the centre position and that
did it. Put it back to an appropriate setting and all was OK.


Thanks for the input. I had a good old fiddle about with it checking
for loose connections and playing with all the switches but didn't
come up with anything like that. I suspect a faulty thermal cutout as
SIP's website says it has one fitted - especially as the cooling fan
still runs, which would be logical if the machine thought it was too hot.

Interestingly, the Clarke 120E MIG I had before never once cut out,
despite not having a fan fitted.