Welding Tips and Tricks

I’m working on my father-in-laws thunderbolt he picked up at a garage sale for $50. It has 2 stinger connector plugs/ports, 1 ground port. Anyone know the reason for it?

My best guess is the amperages line up for common rods, if you have electrode 1 set to 125 amps (common 1/8” 7018) electrode 2 is around 100 amp, In the ballpark for 6011s or maybe 3/32 7018. Anyone know if I’m full of bs or if that’s the reason?


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The output ports go to different windings on the transformer. Basically a higher and low side. You have to use the scale that you are plugged into. There is no real direct position for a specific rod. You have to find a setting that works for the rod your using. Each rod has an amperage it likes and the scales can be off some too. Grab a few different rods and find out where they burn best and either take notes on a note pad to reference later or just write on the machine where each rod is best.

But what’s the difference in the 2 sides? The amperages ranges are fairly similar, not like one is 40-100 and the other 100-220. I did find the manual online, and a chart inside that shows the different volt/amp curves for each side. But I’m no sparky so I don’t really understand it completely. Would love if someone could enlighten me.




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Hi Jay,,,from what I'm seeing (much like my old thunderbolt) you can get a wider range of settings on the hi side and the solid white on the right indicator is only showing to use the hi side to get the machine to give you over 200 amps. I'm not a wire guy either, but I ass U me the machine has some type of windings internally to get the horsepower to the stinger. It just seems that you get an overlap in both sides until you want 200 plus. That's my story and I'm stickkkkin to it.

On the low side you get more OCV. Or open current volts. Higher volts keep the rod from sticking. So my suggestion is run the low side until you need the amps of the high side.

That’s about all my monkey brain could decipher from that graph. But then I couldn’t get any info about how higher OCV will help/hinder, just one short article mentioned higher voltage will help start electrodes without sticking. Thanks for the confirmation.

Before...





Now after some modern tweaks....




Ready to give her back and let him play with it.


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Higher ocv is required to run cellulose rods like 6010. These rods typically need less amps so range A is the go. If you're laying down big thick deposition rods like 7018, 24 or other iron powder rods, they need higher amps but don't need high ocv. Range B is the go.

Because changing arc length (voltage) will have a more pronounced effect on amperage on the "High" range than on the "Low" range, the "High" range should give you more dig when using 6011.

On the other hand, if you're a beginner and not so good at maintaining a particular arc length, the "Low" range should be more forgiving, since arc length won't have as dramatic an effect on amperage.

As for OCV, I'm not sure which range will give a higher or lower OCV ... I suspect the "Low" range will give higher OCV and thus be less prone to sticking on startup (though it will be more prone to snuffing out if you shorten arc length too much once the arc has started)...but you'll need to break out your voltmeter to check OCV from both taps...