Welding Tips and Tricks

So I was practicin on a piece of 1/2 inch steel yesterday on my Lincoln 225 Buzzbox and experimenting with differant amperage settings with some differant rods. Specifically I was runnin some 1/8 6011 and I felt like I needed something between 75 and 90 amps. So while switchin between the two I must not have had the knob all the way on the setting because after I burned a rod and flipped my hood up to get another one I noticed my welder was smokin! It has -never- done this before in the 2 months I've been welding with it. I fiddled with the knob a bit, let it cool down for a couple minutes, and ran another couple rods and no smoke.

My question is, did that little bit of smoke cause any permanent damage? The welder is probably 10 years old or possibly older; I bought it off a guy at work for 50 bucks. But it -never- smoked on me before. Did I ruin it?

you probably had about as much arc inside the machine as you had on your workpiece!...i have done the same thing with my 225 ac, I later opened it up to dust it out, and saw carbon tracks on the edges of the contact points....it'll prob. be fine as long as you are careful not to do that too much more.i've had machines smoke when the transformer got clogged with fuzzy dust....it helps if the machine is up off the ground, sit it on a crate or something.you may also want longer leads for that machine as well,the 15' and 20' that it comes with will not be long enough for building a 4' x8' lawnmower trailer.

Ya I noticed that the short leads are kinda a bummer today when I started building my welding table. Not to mention the 6 foot cord is a joke as well.

I'm about as hesitant to buy more leads as I was to spend money on my old pickup. Im thinking about upgrading to a hobart ac/dc machine soon. Its like 450 bucks and has 1 amp increment adjustment on it.

Decisions decisions :/