Welding Tips and Tricks

im sure one of you guys can help me out here. I was welding away with my Precision Tig 185 on 1/8" aluminum tubing and it shuts off. I didn't think I had over worked it but maybe I did. If so, why won't it come back on? The fan isn't running and it's not smoking or anything. It just won't turn on. I waited over ten minutes to try to turn it on and nothing. HELP!!

Is there a manual reset overload button on the back? And have you verified that the plugin is still live? Third if the plugin is live and the correct voltage you may need to check that something isn't wrong with the power cord.

Also after having tripped out several welders on the internal overloads it may take several hours to cool down enough to restart.

Thanks Poland. Hopefully it will restart tomorrow since you said several hours. I didn't see a switch on the back and really no reason to think the cord is bad but you never know. I saw Jody overheat a 175 and a little light lit up on his machine. I don't have that feature on mine. I honestly didn't think I pushed it that hard but I was full pedal at 150A on each weld. Only welded 2" per weld but I was moving at a decent pace.

So I plugged up my other welder in the same receptical today and had no power so thankfully my welder is ok. Just needed a new breaker. It never tripped but an electrician friend of mine said maybe one leg went bad and it just failed.

I've seen that happen before when I'm running my little Miller 150stl. I've killed 2 or 3 breakers in the last year. All at different customers locations.

I'm not familiar with wiring in your country but over here breakers have a classification after the basic current rating which denotes it's intended use - usually specific to how long & how much over current is needed to trip it - the common domestic ones are the most sensitive to give maximum protection assuming normal domestic products are used - if you need to start motors etc that have a momentary high current spike or loads that are very inductive for other reasons then a different breaker is needed & will interchange on any modern DIN rail enclosure - I presume a similar arrangement exits for you - maybe worth looking into ?

I'm used to running my MP210 and it's an inverter so it doesn't pull as much. My Precision Tig is pulling 64A at max. It's on a 60A breaker so I may have had a little drop in voltage and might have put too much on the breaker. I'm no electrician so I could be totally wrong too. I'm back up and running now so

Glad you have it all sorted - but wow - 64amp draw on 1 machine is high - we never pull that much on 240 volt - be onto 3phase or at the least 440 volt across 2 phases.