idler control on sa200 lincoln welder

Date 01-30-2005 07:54

http://www.weldtron.com/products/idlers/Idler%20controls.htm
Try here, the kit is a mere $286, they have a solenoid alone too. If you only use it occasionally you could cobble up something to manually put it in continuous high idle.
Bill

By SA-200

Date 01-31-2005 02:30

You dont need to cobble anything, just put in the pin for high idle. There is only 500 rpm between low and high idle. I have seen the parts your looking for on ebay before...

By supermechanic (**)

Date 02-01-2005 00:28

I did a real neat set-up on my SAE-400.
From factory,it had no auto-idle, hi-lo, or whatever you want to call it.
Just high(weld) and manual idle. Mine was made in 1945.
I got an aftermarket cruise control,hooked the magnetic drive shaft sensor (hall effect transducer) right to the crankshaft pulley.
I spliced in more control wire to the cruise control switch, (usually piggybacked onto the blinker lever for automobile instalations) and taped it to the stinger.
I set the engine speed to 1800rpm with the cruise control, can
"disengage" when I want idle, hit "resume" when I want to weld, and can fine tune with "accelerate" and "coast".
All in all, it works very slick.

By railbuggy Date 02-01-2005 01:24

That sounds like a good idea if it works good. Could you please tell me a little more detail about how you went about hooking this set up to work. What type of cruise control will work? How was all the wires run for this set up to work? I am really interested in making this set up work if I can get a mental picture of how it works. Thanks for the reply

By supermechanic (**)

Date 02-02-2005 02:06

OK, A little background.
First, the mechanical governor on mine broke, I needed something to hold the engine speed steady.
I ran a garage at the time, and had a spare cruise control that was sent to me in error(wrong style for the car was working on).
I got to thinking about my welder problem and realized that a criuse control is just a programable governer.
The model of cruise control that I had was for a diesel pickup, the install for this model was to attach a sensor to the drive shaft that sensed engine speed for the computer in the cruise control.
This sensor I attached to the pulley on the front of the motor.
The rest of the install was as if I was hooking it up to the engine on a truck.
I followed the diagram for the truck install with the exception of mounting the control switch on the blinker stem, this I mounted on the stinger with the help of some telephone extension wire.
Not a bad set-up.
But, it doesen't bring up the engine speed when the electrode is touched to the work, like a 'real' hi-lo control works.
But for me It works just fine, I got a governor out of it, and I got hi-lo, which I never had before.