Welding Tips and Tricks

I've been inspired by the video where Jody maps out the different wire speed settings, as my old transmig has no chart/etc and I just play with it until it works. Next step was to measure the voltages on all the taps.

I know about the higher ocv, so was going to measure min voltage while throwing an arc. I'm just wondering if you get spikes, etc on old transformer machines that might destroy my multimeter? Fluke fuses are crazy expensive!!

pez wrote:I've been inspired by the video where Jody maps out the different wire speed settings, as my old transmig has no chart/etc and I just play with it until it works. Next step was to measure the voltages on all the taps.

I know about the higher ocv, so was going to measure min voltage while throwing an arc. I'm just wondering if you get spikes, etc on old transformer machines that might destroy my multimeter? Fluke fuses are crazy expensive!!

Pez, it's a good point that you raise.

In my experience, you cannot beat an analog multimeter for this type of work. We have both, but digital meters, and the speed of their sampling rates, makes it virtually impossible to measure highly fluctuating voltages accurately.

However, if you are measuring the secondary voltage, you are definitely not likely to get spikes that will upset the circuit protection of a DMM so as to blow a fuse.

Do make sure though that you are on a Volt reading setting (NOT AMPS - I repeat NOT AMPS). You should be OK, but expect it to be difficulty to find a stable voltage reading while actually welding.

Best
Trev

I've measured mig welding voltage before - I don't have an expensive meter, but the reading was stable enough to use.