Welding Tips and Tricks

Alright maybe just maybe this could be something minor I have a Lincoln Ranger 305G. I have power at my leads but cant strike and arc what could be my issue?

also all of my outlets are functioning

Stator brushes worn to their limit/barely contacting the stator? Reads full OCV when you aren't drawing current, but goes "dead" when you try to draw some juice? Quick test... plug in a 100W incandescent droplight on the generator side, and see what it does when you try to strike up.

Just my first thought. I'll have to dig a little deeper on the machine, but that's my "gut reaction". The generator side might even be a separate winding, so the above test may not tell you much...

Steve S

Alright I check that tomorrow now if the brushes are bad what am I looking at for replacement price wise?

That I don't know, but on the whole, brushes are inexpensive... If that's the case, be prepared to dress the commutator rings with Schotchbrite untill fairly smooth.

A local alternator/starter electrical shop can make brushes for you, if the originals are costly.

Steve S

Alright I'm going to have it looked at tomorrow after i test it

It could also be corroded connections. (They need to be removed and cleaned from time to time.)

An example would be, that a small strand of wire can carry a small amperage but the exact same voltage.
It takes many of these small wires connected together to carry lots of amps. Poor connections work the same way.
The voltage might be there, but just not enough amps to get the job done.

Well i pulled it apart and cleaned out still nothing still reading I'm pretty sure the weld control board is bad and its Lincoln Part # G3660 is 843$ . On a good note I can plug my buzz box in and works very well

I'm have not had to repair this model - but try looking up what the full load exciter voltage is ( if possible ) if you can't find this going by other similar size sets it will likely be in the mid 20's maybe upto 30 volts - disconect the control boards and apply DC straight to the brushes - start with 12volts ( from a car battery if you don't own a bench power supply ) use an inline fuse just in case of problems & wih the rotor externally excited you should now have welding current if the main winding set & diode pack is good - you should be able to go upto 24volts if you wish to test closer to the sets maximum amps - so now if you have power to weld it's a control board issue - if you still have nothing then I'm sorry to say it's major.

Not saying this applies to your set , but I looked at a Petbow set recently that did exactly as yours has & the owner was told it would not be economic to repair - BUT after chasing the wiring through I found that the small output was being generated by residual & there was no excitor voltage which it turns out was one bad wire coming from the ignition switch as on this model the control board used battery voltage to initially excite the rotor - once running it was self sustaining - in this case I excited externally with everything still connected ( risky but had little to lose ) and the set produced welding power - I disconnected the external power & the set continued to weld - but switch the set off & re-start it - back to nothing - fixed a new power wire from the key & it was as good as new - trouble is I'm too honest - told the guy the truth & got very little "reward" for my time ! I guess 2feet of 14g is not that valuable - but I was the only guy that figured the fault.

Your outlets are running from a separate stator.
See the electrical schematic of your machine as follows;
http://www.lincolnelectric.com/assets/s ... /im674.pdf

Do you have access to a multimeter?
Do you know how to use it?
I can walk you thru the repair, but it's sometimes difficult.
At my shop, I use a Huntron Tracker to narrow down the problem.

Sgfpat wrote:also all of my outlets are functioning

Yes I have access to tools and a multimeter here's another thing as well I have to manually adjust the idle to use my tools I pulled the boards off and blew them out with canned air they look good no burns of damage . I'm terrible with the electric aspect of it

From what I understand if the unit sat for a while you have to flash the exciter but like I said before I'm good with small engine aspect but lack the electrical aspect

How long have you had this welder? and how long since it was last used?

Can you please check that the 'Weld Terminals Control' switch is turned on?
(located to the right of the 'Arc Control' knob.)

Sgfpat wrote:From what I understand if the unit sat for a while you have to flash the exciter but like I said before I'm good with small engine aspect but lack the electrical aspect

Ive had it for 2 months now i picked it up off of craigslist for 200$ The guy couldnt tell me if it even ran a nice cleaning fresh plugs and an oil change she started up.Switch is on and functions cuts voltage on and off. I was getting 83v to my multimeter off my stubs

The one item that you could eliminate right away is your cables.
Have you tried a different set of cables? Even a set of car jumper cables will work for a test.

Ill try diffrent leads but they're brand new