Wire Feed problems

Date 05-28-2007 18:10

My wire feed only works when I push the wire advance button on the welder. I can "weld" with the handle button pushed if I also hold the wire advance button on the welder down. My problem is the wire wont advance with the gun button only the button on the welder. Whats funny is it worked 2 days ago hooked up to 120 but when I went to 220 it stopped working. I was testing the unit to see if everything worked with a 120 line. The welder is a solar 165 208/230v from 1982 with no jumper that I can find. In between I had the gun apart to get a tip and nozzle. There are two wires in the gun. When I push the button they test fine all the way to a harness plug before the wire feed motor and a circuit board.

I was hoping for some ideas before I pull the circuit board and start testing that along with chasing every wire in this circuit with my ohm meter. I dont see anything noticable as far as melted circuits or anything

Thanks

By midnightmoon (*)

Date 05-28-2007 22:51

I did some more digging and found that everything checks out to the circuit board and everything on the board is fine. I found someone had jumped two of the wires coming off the continious/stitch switch and the electrical tape came off and may have been grounding out on the case. I also found one of the wires to the solid state relay was loose on the input side. I fixed those two things and hooked it back up to a 120 line to test and it works again. I will try again with the 220 later to see if I get the same problem again. I also took some time and checked all the wires for cuts ect and all seems okay.