Hi all,

I was trying to find a thread where I could just tag this on the end, but sadly there doesn't seem to be one.

My Dad has a Welder that he has sort of "allowed me access to" so I can practise and learn to Weld, I'll be buying any parts it needs so it's win win for him.

The only trouble is the Welder I "have" is quite old, it's one my Dad got given (or got cheaply, can't recall, I was about 13 when he got it - I'm now 24) and has a limited amount of information with it. When I say "Limited" I mean - nothing, none, zero zip .

I will post a picture of the control panel when I get in from Work. When I had a short course when at College (even this was a good 5 years ago) I only learnt on a Welder that had 2 adjusters, Power and Wire Speed.... this one has 3, I only know for sure which is the Power selector. Would wire Tension be on the front control panel? Thought they were usually inside with the wire drum?

I was sort of hoping (with use of the up coming picture) someone might be able to shed some light on what each Selector does. I have only so far hooked up all the cables and tried on some scrap Steel sheet, the results aren't all that great, and I could be here a while trying to test each setting, while I don't mind buying more wire, there is still a finite amount of it (I'm not made of money heh).

I still (just) recall the principal of welding, and what settings effect what, but I don't know how to change those settings .

Cheers
Matt2

Hi.

I wouldn't worry about not having any manuals - welding kit is all pretty similar.

If you only know which is the amp control, try playing with the other two and see which one changes the wire speed. That one is the wire feed speed control.

No, there will be a wire roller tension adjustment knob on the feed motor (how hard the wire is gripped by the rollers). There will probably also be a tension adjuster on the spindle that the wire reel sits on.

If you're out of practice it is realistic to expect to burn some wire practicing before you can do anything useful reliably.

A pic of the front will prob sort it all out. Then its down to playing and experimenting on your part (the fun bit)!

Cheers, Al.

Like Al said, a picture will be worth a 1000 words.

Have you got gas or are you using gasless wire?

If you don't get very far, I'm in Sheffield if you want to bring it over and have a practice, i've got wire, gas and plenty of off-cuts around.

3 ??

Prob a
(1)Low or High Main Setting
(2) Fine adjustment of ^^^^ (1)
and then ..Wire speed (3)

Nige

It could be a variable inductor, although it's unlikely.

could be latching control or spot and stitch.
Needs a picture for sure.

Think I have the same welder done the shed. Will check in the morning!

Had another look last night while taking pictures, got the name of the unit wrong. It's "MigMatic 160" not "MigMate 160" .

How do I go about trying to "educate" my Dad on welder settings? He usually ONLY changes the power for any steel he welds. I also don't think the other settings that he never touches are right, whats the best way for this, so far I've tried the "I read that...." and it got met with "well it's worked for me for years, when you can weld you can tell me how to" . Suppose I best get practising eh? . He started out Stick Welding, so I think the MIG settings are confusing, remmember how angry he got when he thought I had messed with the settings, apparently it took him 4 hours to get it "right" .


What would that do/why would it be used? Looking at the pictures the symbol below the left control could be related to that....

Anyway - the pictures:

Front Panel Full:


Controls Close (sorry about flash glare):


Info Panel:


Cheers
Matt2

Hi there, it looks like a timer for stitch welding.

The 0 to 7 is the amp control (effectively your 'power setting').

The wire feed rate is bottom right (pic of two rollers with wire feeding in between).

The other one, bottom left shows a torch with on / off 'blobs' and a 't' for 'time'. Since there is no dedicated separate on time and off time settings, this will probably control the percentage of a given period - maybe a second or so - that the torch is 'on' for. So you just hold down the trigger constantly and the unit pulses on and off for you (good for not getting too much heat into the material - eg for welding thin stuff.

While you are testing it, make sure the stitch timer is set to zero. You don't need it during normal operation and it'll just confuse things. Come back to it when you're up and running and have a play to see how it works.

In my opinion, the best way to approach the settings is to set the power according to how thick the material you are welding is (you'll become familiar with the levels with experience), and adjust the wire feed speed while welding some scrap until you get a nice 'buzzing' sound - like frying bacon. In broad terms, if the wire is burning back in pulses towards the torch tip, you need more feed speed, if it is 'jabbing' into the work, you need less for that power setting.

Sadly there is no magic one setting, so its better to get familiar with how you can set it than rely on finding it once and 'not touch the controls'.

You can't just leave the feed speed and change the power setting - it'll not be correctly set if you do that.

Looks like it could be a useful machine. Hope it helps.

Al

Thats fantastic!

Remmembering old practise welds I had done I could never figure out why I couldn't get a solid "strip" of weld, it always went in blobs, also explains why the machine sounded so shocking, I initially thought the transformer was dead as when it was pulsing you can guess the sound it gave .

At least if I can do a practise weld and show it with a long, solid strip thats got to prove things to my Dad .

For thin stuff it is actually a good feature, but when trying to practise on a machine I have never used or have iny info on, it was getting frustrating....

Cheers
Matt2

Matt,

Have a read through these tutorials, also, reading this forum might answer any other questions you have.

A rough guide to power setting is to crank it right up and run a test on some same-thickness scrap, then turn it down until you're just not blowing holes in it.

Found that website and forums earlier in the week, almost read the text off them. Surprised the text isn't burned into my Monitor .

Really helped understand what it "should" look like, admittedly I have nothing to compare it to so I don't know if those welds are "perfect" but to me they look damn good.

Thanks though, think I might go and have another read
Cheers
Matt2