Welding Tips and Tricks

I’ve owned a Miller 625 Xtreme now for a couple years, but used very little, maybe an hour total cutting time on the unit ... Yesterday I’m cutting a 4 foot run of aluminum diamond plate, starts out nice, then quickly gets shitty... starts skipping cuts, then no cuts at all... I change out all the consumables... nothing... I call Miller talk to Josh in the Plasma section, we narrow it down to the PC Board inside... “We don’t make that board anymore so remaining stock is very expensive”.... $1500. For a replacement board... OUCH! No train-in, no discounts

Find a local repair shop and have them diagnose it. They may also have some “spare parts” machines laying about to scavenge the needed board. I went this route with a 12vs Shitcase a couple years back and it cost me $250 to have it repaired versus $2,000 to replace.

It's a shame that a lot of manufacturers now days drop their support for their products so soon.. I had a Syncrowave 250 years ago the the main board failed, ended up finding a company that rebuilds them for a lot less than a replacing with a new one.

Is this the 625 Xtreme that they are still offering on their website, and they're claiming that they no longer have a reasonable stock of repair parts, on a currently offered piece of equipment?

This seems like a warning sign for any considering a Miller plasma, or with one already, then.

I just bought a 375 xtreme and haven't even lit an arc yet, but bought it thinking that Miller would back their equipment more reliably than the various Chinese outfits that drop support once it's in the customer's hands.
Trying to charge you almost as much as a new machine doesn't seem like much of an improvement.

One of the things you NEED to be aware of when buying Miller, Hobart and now sadly Smith equipment it ITW who owns all 3 brands only supports machines for the Federally mandated period of 7 years. This has been ITW Policy since the 1990s.
In the case of good selling models, a minor change will be made to the machine so a new model number can be assigned allowing the original machine to be abandoned.

ITW did the math long ago and determined there is greater profit in selling new machines than there is in supporting existing machines.
Anyone considering buying any ITW product should search up the ITW 80/20 Policy and decide if you want to buy into that model!

While you're searching take a few extra minutes and look into tin whisking solder defects on PC boards since we were all blessed by lead free solder.

Handwriting is all on the wall, all you gotta do is read it.

Some people read it and are making good money remanufacturing PC boards for "obsolete" machines.

Sorry, but sure does feed ammo into the 3 import vs 1 USA made purchasing debate. Unfortunately, the manufacturing motto these days is "Planned Obsolescence", the "expired by" date is getting shorter all the time.