A Good Saturday Indeed

My first MIG welder was a no-name brand that was also difficult to make a consistent bead with. The problem was that the roller feed motor slowed down whenever I started to draw welding current. I replaced the motor drive supply with a regulated DC supply and pulse width modulated output. The motor drive was rock stable after that.
 
Jake,
Since no one else has said it.
:you suck:
*************Just Saying*********************************G*************************************
 
I think he should have to let us use them for a while. Just to test them out better for him.
 
That looks like a real oldie of a Lincoln buzz-box. I guess it's old enough to have a copper wire transformer and not the cheaper and nastier aluminum-wound transformer, that Lincoln went to in the later versions.
I bought one of them off eBay here in Oz, for a few bucks - but when it arrived, I found the transformer was burnt out, and all the rubber was rotten, and falling off the cables!! :mad:
I went to scrap it, thinking maybe I'd get some compensation from the copper in the transformer - but all I found was a heap of aluminum! At least I got a few dollars for the copper in the cables!
I kept the controls and switches and the casing, thinking maybe, someone, someday will say, "Hey, those old Lincoln buzz-box parts are just what I need for one I'm restoring!
I guess I'm living in dreamland, and no-one will ever bother restoring one - because too many were built, and no-one will even know what you do with them, in 30 years time! :rolleyes:
A little later on, I went to an auction and picked up two nice low-use stick welders (a 400 amp and a 300 amp) - for $60 for both! I gave the 30o amp to a good buddy, and he loves it! - even though he's been using a 250 MIG for years.
You certainly got paid well for that lil' ole welding job! :D
 
That old Lincoln looks exactly like the one we used in high-school shop class way back in the early 50's. Our shop instructor said, "Ya know, this thing will run a bead all by itself - then he proved it. Struck the arc and just laid the rod holder down on its side. It ran an almost perfect bead until the rod was almost gone. He then made the statement that you could also weld tin cans together with it. He picked up a couple of tomato cans and proceeded to prove it. No burnt holes and the weld was very pretty. This impressed me so much that throughout the year I must have destroyed a whole junkyard full of cans learning how it was done. Yes, I did finally succeed. The machine will also do a very good job brazing with the arc brazing torch accessory and around 1/8" brazing rods. Unfortunately, since I left the farm in 1954 to join the Air Force I have done no welding, or brazing. Since my job was in electronic maintenance, I learned the craft of soldering, up to and including NASA standards. I have often wished for one of these Lincoln machines. There have been many times I could have used one. I wasn't aware that they had started winding the transformers with aluminum wire. What a cheap skate low blow.
 
These old Lincolns are representative of the great equipment that America produced in its manufacturing heyday, before the Chinese onslaught.
I've got a Lincoln 5HP 3 phase electric motor driving my 30cfm shop compressor and it's at least 40 yrs old, and it still purrs like the day it was new. Huge bearings, robust windings, it could withstand a nuclear war.
Nowadays, you buy a Chinese electric motor and it's a lucky dip. The Chinese tell lies about the capacity of nearly everything they make, they will use substandard components at every opportunity, and they only understand "cheap".
I bought a big ol' 300 amp Lincoln bullet welder way back in the early 1970's, when I owned and ran a small fleet of earthmovers. I paid $1000 for that welder, and it came with an LN-5 wire feeder as well.
It was probably around 25 yrs old when I bought it, and it was considered obsolete then, as MIG was taking over.
However, that ol' bullet welder poured thousands of pounds of weld onto bulldozer track links, into welding on new track grousers, into bucket and blade repairs by the dozen. It never missed a beat, in summer heat and winter cold.
It was sold along with the business in the mid-1990's and I have no idea where it ended up.
I'd like to think its still welding away somewhere - but I'll wager some management fool sent it for scrap because he deemed it as obsolete, because it was too old, too big, and too heavy - and "you can't get parts for that old stuff anymore". :(
 
Amen to that, onetrack. Lincoln was marvelous on parts for that old stuff. I helped a bloke twenty years back get a faceplate for a Lincoln 2 cylinder DC welder.It was 45 years old then.We were able to get the dial faceplate from Lincoln Australia and he was able to read the settings instead of guessing them. The little air cooled machine ran like a champ for 45 years and going strong when I saw it last.

The Chinese can and will make tools and machinery to specs and manufacture pretty decent welders ( Token Tools for instance) made to the Australian designers specs and specified quality components.

A lot of the problem is ourselves,in wanting a product cheap. Importers capitalise on that and offers imports made to a price ,not a specified quality.

What I can't forgive and won't forget is the big well known name brand companies Using their well regarded brand name to sell crap manufactured in china. Take Vice Grips as an example -remember the original Peterson manufacturer. Now owned by Irwin we now see the same designated model sold with smaller pins,weaker springs and substandard heat treatment sold for the same price level as they once commanded. That is where we are being conned.
Once again specifications were downgraded but in this case the product is not cheap.
 
Jake what was the welding job? please don't tell me it was a gate hinge or something that simple.
I have an older Lincoln sp125 wire feed pretty much like that mac love it. I sold a friend of mine the Lincoln AC tombstone welder like that I had when I got a square wave 255. I would not have got rid of it except space and it was at that point redundant equipment.
Nice score.
Mark
 
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