/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>1438999

My Harbor Freight welder failed on me yesterday for the very first time. Armed with intimate knowledge of the inner workings of my unit, I did not automatically junk it and go buy another like others. Instead, I opened it up and determined the problem.

The welder was welding particularly cold, and I saw smoke coming from the torch handle. Eventually it failed to arc at all when I pulled the trigger; it only fed the wire. So I touched the wire to the ground clamp and pulled the trigger. Only wire. Then I opened the case, released the wire feed roller, and touched the wire to the positive pole on the capacitor. Trigger pull; no arc. I took a multimeter, set it to Volts DC and tested the poles of the capacitor. It charged up to 30 some volts, so I knew the innards of the welder were working fine, and that there was a fault between the capacitor and the torch tip on the negative side. I opened up the torch and saw smoke residue inside, and where the lead was supposed to be electrically connected to the brass torch tip there was a lot of nasty looking stuff. I pulled at the lead and saw where it was supposed to be threaded, and immediately knew that thar was the problem. So I sanded the surfaces and soldered the connection together, assembled the torch back together, and proceeded to continue welding on my merry way. No cost repair. Powerful knowledge.

http://forum.driveonwood.com/t/modifying-the-harbor-freight-120v-welder-if-you-already-own-one/64/5