So I'm studying electrical engineering and just finished a lecture on power electronics. I am very happy to recognize many design features I learnt in that lecture. You are doing an awesome job at explaining things!
oh yeah, excellent video. can't wait to see part II. Besides the RIFA caps that you have mentioned already, also replace the red Roederstein (ROE) caps in the middle of the board. exciting transformers and coils
Hey Max, nice to see you here! And you're right: The old Roederstein-caps cause a lot of trouble as well. I had a lot of trouble with those in old "Braun" Hifi equipment from the 70s. Cheers, Gerolf
My friend, the company name is spoken one letter at the time, but in fast sequence, E S A B. keep up with great videos. really love the repair-A Thon, nice to see you work on something from Sweden.
Wow Biltema... that coil is aftermarket AF. They are generally not highly regarded in electrical equipment i.e. electricians tend to use Biltema as a running joke. Really impressed with the scale of this project you've undertaken, I will watch this series with great interest :)
You mentioned that the Esab welders are normally yellow. The machine you have somewhat resembles my 300A Westinghouse stick/tig. I recently learned that Esab bought out the Westinghouse welding division which tells me the welder you have was from somewhere near that time frame.
You're my style, dawg. Except I bought a buzz box and in a week bought all the parts necessary to make an addon module for TIG welding + arc start. I hot glued it all to the inside of a plastic spool for maximum ventillation :D
Definitely replace all those yellow caps, they often fail, if they haven’t yet then they will do. I have had them blow up on me whilst recording repair videos !
Note that when reassembling aluminum connections need special treatment. I had to repair a welder where the steel bolts burned through the connection of the inductor. Trimmed back to good aluminum, cleaned well with a new stainless wire brush, applied NOALOX (anti-oxidant)compound, and reassembled with brass hardware (copper might have been better.)
I have a Biltema bike, swedish quality. Too bad ESAB is curently outsorcing to China, I know from an electronist that services esab, Miller, kempi, and other welders that he found some cheaper esab inverters to have exactly the same circuit boards as a much cheaper brand (alfa in), also the way they are build if a mosfet blows the whole board blows up so they can,t realy be repaired unless You pretty much replace the whole board wich means replacing the welder itself, unlike Miller or lincoln or even older telwin that have a high level of protection, not to mention kempi and fronius that almost never return to service. So maybe esab was never about high quality, thow their machines are knowen to have good arc characteristics.
Esab has turned into un repairable crap to be honest, the power electronics are proprietary blocks so if one component in it blows just get a new welder.
Nice video, I'm excited about how this restoration might end. Just one small correction, you talked about the "stick welding" as being the way to go when outside welding as the MIG/MAG necessarily need a gas tank, this a common misconception. There is a product called "Flux-cored self-shielded wire" that can be used in a MIG/MAG machine and will produce a gas shield as its internal flux is evaporated, similarly to what happens in the "stick welding" process. Although not very common, this type of self-shielded wire can produce excellent results for out-of-position welding and are becoming more popular in the application of robot welding for large machines (as in big shipyards).
04:09 : Is this a good idea, having the leads' sockets so low close to the base of the welder? It feels somewhat wrong, although, I guess, if the leads are long, it saves them from always being bent and causing them to be unduly strained. It feels to me as if they are more prone to be accidentally jammed against some other object lying around in a workshop, kicked and trampled over or, more likely, tangled into those cart wheels than would be the case if they were located higher towards the top of the welder. Am I completely off-base thinking that?
You're reverse engineering analysis delivered in layman's explanation are always interesting and enjoyable to listen to. How often can you find someone who understands so much depth about electronic circuitry and design that they can then break it down for the rest of us mere mortals to go: "OHHHHH! SO THATS HOW ALL THE ANGRY PIXIES GET TURNED INTO LITTLE WHITE HOT THUNDERBOLTS and INSTANTLY VAPORIZE MY AUTOMOTIVE BODY PANELS!" 😅 Even if this video is 3 years and my comment 1000 days too late, it's content is still being enjoyed with another Vote from this subscriber for more similar videos and follow up content delving into into it all. ... and yes even videos where you continue onto the more specialized and in depth breakdowns and topics that would be best likened to sprinting past ALICE.on our way down the rabbit hole.
recently found a weird electrode welder on the yard sale. Huge 380V 3ph motor on wheels (looked like a air compressor with tank) and a controlpanel ontop where the cables / hand piece plug into. weird one. maybe they used the momentum of the motor for higher initial currents.
gamerpaddy that is a rotary converter, basicaly two electric motors with the same rotor. Used to be the ducks guts Back in the Day, capable of Tig and stick( 7018 and 6010, 6013) verry powerfull and reliable, high dutty cicle High power Rotary converter are used in electrical distribution where a transformer would be as big as a five story building. rotary converters are compact but cant handle overload
yea just found some infos on them, seems to be from early 1900 when there was no diodes around. using a generator seems to be the best way to generate DC. mercury rectifiers were big and low power.
I an not sure whether those capacitors crack due to internal swelling or shrinking of the encapsulating resin, but just about everyone of those capacitors that I have ever seen has had a crack in it even ones that have not been used.
Couldn't you measure the resistance and/or inductance of the primary windings on all three transformer legs in order to find out whether the one winding is damaged?
I tried TIG welding once and couldn't manage to do it even after many attempts. It is EXTREMELY difficult. I kept melting or touching the tungsten tip to the piece. My hands are just not steady enough.
I can tell you high end welders use copper wires inside of the transformer. Aluminum is just a cheap substitute. But these days many use the cheaper metal. Peace
You forgot to mention one of the biggest benefits of MMA, it is used outside not because people don't want to carry a gas cylinder but because it has the best shielding in wind, wind can easily blow away your shielding gas. Glad to stumble upon your channel I also believe this abundance of cheap labor and materials will soon cease.
It seems as though this welder has several issues. I can't understand how so many issues could be present. Poor maintenance/modifications might be part of the sad history of this welder. Did the failure of capacitors cause overheating of the core? Maybe it was abuse by welding too much without allowing cooling to occur? Might it be helpful to understand the failure process so as to engineer a better fix? Is it even worth fixing or is it better as a parts donor? Patiently waiting for part two.
It is entirely possible that a newby was in possession of this welder at some point and ran it haywire. I have seen the apprentice marks on other machines before, where i had expected them to be in decent condition (because who would buy an industrial piece of equipment and not know how to use it), but, never this many.
I think you have never been to welding booth at factory :P They beat crap out of those welders 24/7 and cleaning/maintenance is only once a year. This cumulation of damage is totally normal for industrial conditions. Saw many cases when brand new industrial migs were dying after few months cuz of tons of dust/vibrations on pcbs.
I'm really amazed by the liberal use of blockklemmen/lüsterklemmen/screw terminals in this machine. It's probably fine but If I would not know that this is a _professional_ machine I would probably call shenanigans.
Probably, somebody tried to modify it for single line power, and didn't add any, type of internal grounding or connection so parts of the system went into an non symmetrical sympathy and it fried itself... Sorry. That was probably bullcrap. Do you know why it failed or got so corrupted?
Those caps are ridiculously shitty. Otherwise, nice doorstep/scrap metal salvage :D Well, even if you do not get it running again the transformer is awesome to reuse! Also, nice DALEX machine.
That blue part isnt, cant be original. The part is a "HighEffienceIgnitionCoil" in Swedish. The brand Biltema i a Swedish lowcost brand with own warehouses and own brandings (parts made in cheap labour countries). The question is , How did it get there ? To Germany ?
motherjoon the world best welding equipement is stil of german make, FRONIUS, so.. then comes kempi ( finish) and then Miller and Lincoln(usa). esab, Air liquid, telwin and manny more are chinesium welders branded as american, german,french, italian...
Alexandru Alanei 🤔 Hmmm...i Think Esab WAS among the best before they outsourced production to Poland (Pro transformer machines) and China (inverter and home gamer machines). My old Smashweld 250 is still going strong after some 30 years... If i had the need to buy a new welder now, i would buy Kemppi or Fronius (if i had the money)
Part two is now online: ruclips.net/video/hYpD2ZsNPU0/видео.html
2:48 - It s a non-fusible electrode (WIG), not unconsumable. People might think it lasts forever. In practice, I use one every week.
So I'm studying electrical engineering and just finished a lecture on power electronics. I am very happy to recognize many design features I learnt in that lecture. You are doing an awesome job at explaining things!
oh yeah, excellent video. can't wait to see part II.
Besides the RIFA caps that you have mentioned already, also replace the red Roederstein (ROE) caps in the middle of the board.
exciting transformers and coils
Hey Max, nice to see you here! And you're right: The old Roederstein-caps cause a lot of trouble as well. I had a lot of trouble with those in old "Braun" Hifi equipment from the 70s. Cheers, Gerolf
I love the sweeping hand gesture at 3:10 .
These are not the welding machines you are looking for.
My friend, the company name is spoken one letter at the time, but in fast sequence, E S A B. keep up with great videos. really love the repair-A Thon, nice to see you work on something from Sweden.
very clear and concise explanation,plus excellent command of technical english, ty
Wow Biltema... that coil is aftermarket AF. They are generally not highly regarded in electrical equipment i.e. electricians tend to use Biltema as a running joke.
Really impressed with the scale of this project you've undertaken, I will watch this series with great interest :)
Ich habe nochmal unter ESAB manuals nachgeschaut, die BE hatte Drucklegung 1982, da ist der Aufbau auch sehr umfangreich erklärt!
This was your best stuff. Excellent and valuable for many of us.
Impressive. You are showing again and again that it is possible to repair everything.
will be very interesting to see diy ac/dc tig designs
You mentioned that the Esab welders are normally yellow. The machine you have somewhat resembles my 300A Westinghouse stick/tig. I recently learned that Esab bought out the Westinghouse welding division which tells me the welder you have was from somewhere near that time frame.
I admire your efforts. You work hard despite of huge obstacles. I wish you the best of luck.
You're my style, dawg. Except I bought a buzz box and in a week bought all the parts necessary to make an addon module for TIG welding + arc start. I hot glued it all to the inside of a plastic spool for maximum ventillation :D
I have no electronic knowledge. I didnt make any weld... but I enjoy to watch your videos...cheers from Turkey...
Makes me want to go out and buy an old broken one now and fix it!
Definitely replace all those yellow caps, they often fail, if they haven’t yet then they will do. I have had them blow up on me whilst recording repair videos !
Meister Gerolf, as usual excellent video, respect
Note that when reassembling aluminum connections need special treatment. I had to repair a welder where the steel bolts burned through the connection of the inductor. Trimmed back to good aluminum, cleaned well with a new stainless wire brush, applied NOALOX (anti-oxidant)compound, and reassembled with brass hardware (copper might have been better.)
Oh boy! A Biltema coil (like Aldi in Germany) ... Good Gluck!
Derek N. Eder and the weels are from Ullared 😁
Nice biltema™ ignition coil. 😏
Haha Biltema! Jag dör!
I am pretty sure that´s not the original...
I have a Biltema bike, swedish quality. Too bad ESAB is curently outsorcing to China, I know from an electronist that services esab, Miller, kempi, and other welders that he found some cheaper esab inverters to have exactly the same circuit boards as a much cheaper brand (alfa in), also the way they are build if a mosfet blows the whole board blows up so they can,t realy be repaired unless You pretty much replace the whole board wich means replacing the welder itself, unlike Miller or lincoln or even older telwin that have a high level of protection, not to mention kempi and fronius that almost never return to service. So maybe esab was never about high quality, thow their machines are knowen to have good arc characteristics.
Yes, Unfortunatly almost everything is outsourced here today. It´s not a bad coil, it will do what it´s made for.
Esab has turned into un repairable crap to be honest, the power electronics are proprietary blocks so if one component in it blows just get a new welder.
Nice video, I'm excited about how this restoration might end. Just one small correction, you talked about the "stick welding" as being the way to go when outside welding as the MIG/MAG necessarily need a gas tank, this a common misconception. There is a product called "Flux-cored self-shielded wire" that can be used in a MIG/MAG machine and will produce a gas shield as its internal flux is evaporated, similarly to what happens in the "stick welding" process. Although not very common, this type of self-shielded wire can produce excellent results for out-of-position welding and are becoming more popular in the application of robot welding for large machines (as in big shipyards).
Big High current AC stuff scares me, the way they have to build that stuff to handle the current 😱
04:09 : Is this a good idea, having the leads' sockets so low close to the base of the welder? It feels somewhat wrong, although, I guess, if the leads are long, it saves them from always being bent and causing them to be unduly strained.
It feels to me as if they are more prone to be accidentally jammed against some other object lying around in a workshop, kicked and trampled over or, more likely, tangled into those cart wheels than would be the case if they were located higher towards the top of the welder. Am I completely off-base thinking that?
nice and interesting video.
What a bunch of components!
I see that you have marked all the cables ... I missed it anyway
I'll see you the next.
Hi
You're reverse engineering analysis delivered in layman's explanation are always interesting and enjoyable to listen to. How often can you find someone who understands so much depth about electronic circuitry and design that they can then break it down for the rest of us mere mortals to go:
"OHHHHH! SO THATS HOW ALL THE ANGRY PIXIES GET TURNED INTO LITTLE WHITE HOT THUNDERBOLTS and INSTANTLY VAPORIZE MY AUTOMOTIVE BODY PANELS!" 😅
Even if this video is 3 years and my comment 1000 days too late, it's content is still being enjoyed with another Vote from this subscriber for more similar videos and follow up content delving into into it all. ... and yes even videos where you continue onto the more specialized and in depth breakdowns and topics that would be best likened to sprinting past ALICE.on our way down the rabbit hole.
Eagerly wating for part 2!very informatoive. I watch all vodeos with care n attention
Biltema and esab:) i say hello from Sweden:)
Ausgezeichnet, vielen dank!
recently found a weird electrode welder on the yard sale. Huge 380V 3ph motor on wheels (looked like a air compressor with tank) and a controlpanel ontop where the cables / hand piece plug into. weird one. maybe they used the momentum of the motor for higher initial currents.
gamerpaddy that is a rotary converter, basicaly two electric motors with the same rotor. Used to be the ducks guts Back in the Day, capable of Tig and stick( 7018 and 6010, 6013) verry powerfull and reliable, high dutty cicle
High power Rotary converter are used in electrical distribution where a transformer would be as big as a five story building. rotary converters are compact but cant handle overload
yea just found some infos on them, seems to be from early 1900 when there was no diodes around. using a generator seems to be the best way to generate DC. mercury rectifiers were big and low power.
"Back side" Rear side, my old son. Back side is what you use to sit on!!
I an not sure whether those capacitors crack due to internal swelling or shrinking of the encapsulating resin, but just about everyone of those capacitors that I have ever seen has had a crack in it even ones that have not been used.
I learned how to tig on a similar ac/dc esab tig
Brilliant. Thank you.
What's the difference between dc positive electrode and negative electrode?
You are a genious!
Couldn't you measure the resistance and/or inductance of the primary windings on all three transformer legs in order to find out whether the one winding is damaged?
at 7:45 do you have biltema in germany?
I tried TIG welding once and couldn't manage to do it even after many attempts. It is EXTREMELY difficult. I kept melting or touching the tungsten tip to the piece. My hands are just not steady enough.
What purpose to the large wire wound resistors serve?
Impressive transformer 😮
lol this high frequency starter board looks a bit like home etched
good work....
can you tell me what is the inductance of that output inductor? I´m building my own inverter tig so that value would be quite helpful :)
Holy shit dude, I live down the street from you! :) Dont worry not gonna put details here...
:D
Did you fix it ?
I can tell you high end welders use copper wires inside of the transformer. Aluminum is just a cheap substitute. But these days many use the cheaper metal. Peace
SCR's are from Poland.Unitra Lamina
Rifa capacitors; Destroying electronics long before china made crappy capacitors... :P
I thought that's what they looked like. Those have a reputation for letting the magic smoke out... :-)
Excelente ,Aleman!
I like this
Bravo!!! thanks : )
You forgot to mention one of the biggest benefits of MMA, it is used outside not because people don't want to carry a gas cylinder but because it has the best shielding in wind, wind can easily blow away your shielding gas. Glad to stumble upon your channel I also believe this abundance of cheap labor and materials will soon cease.
ahh biltema. var ett tag sedan man var där :P
very good
It seems as though this welder has several issues. I can't understand how so many issues could be present. Poor maintenance/modifications might be part of the sad history of this welder. Did the failure of capacitors cause overheating of the core? Maybe it was abuse by welding too much without allowing cooling to occur? Might it be helpful to understand the failure process so as to engineer a better fix? Is it even worth fixing or is it better as a parts donor? Patiently waiting for part two.
It is entirely possible that a newby was in possession of this welder at some point and ran it haywire. I have seen the apprentice marks on other machines before, where i had expected them to be in decent condition (because who would buy an industrial piece of equipment and not know how to use it), but, never this many.
I think you have never been to welding booth at factory :P They beat crap out of those welders 24/7 and cleaning/maintenance is only once a year. This cumulation of damage is totally normal for industrial conditions. Saw many cases when brand new industrial migs were dying after few months cuz of tons of dust/vibrations on pcbs.
Nice!
I'm really amazed by the liberal use of blockklemmen/lüsterklemmen/screw terminals in this machine.
It's probably fine but If I would not know that this is a _professional_ machine I would probably call shenanigans.
wir brauchen dringend mehr deutsche youtuber die solche Themen behandeln!freue mich schon auf den zweiten teil
Cool
i need schematics for that device bro !
do you accept projects? I have a 1950 f-1 zenith radio that had rain damage, I would love to see working agian
Try Mr Carlson's Lab, he has a ton of videos about vintage radios and how to repair them.
ruclips.net/channel/UCU9SoQxJewrWb_3GxeteQPA
Wow that thing is a mess. Surely not worth fixing ?. Could take months to fully restore it, and allot of money in new parts.
Can I send you some tools in the mail? From The USA
Probably, somebody tried to modify it for single line power, and didn't add any, type of internal grounding or connection so parts of the system went into an non symmetrical sympathy and it fried itself... Sorry. That was probably bullcrap. Do you know why it failed or got so corrupted?
Ah that disgusting smell of RIFA smoke coming to my mind...
13:42 you are making quite a fuzz about secondary vs. primary windings! Get it straight dude! :p
i have an Esab plant were i live in the carolinas USA
Those caps are ridiculously shitty. Otherwise, nice doorstep/scrap metal salvage :D Well, even if you do not get it running again the transformer is awesome to reuse! Also, nice DALEX machine.
That blue part isnt, cant be original. The part is a "HighEffienceIgnitionCoil" in Swedish. The brand Biltema i a Swedish lowcost brand with own warehouses and own brandings (parts made in cheap labour countries).
The question is , How did it get there ? To Germany ?
gloves my friend, gloves
Hase pfft, won't do much on a 400volt capacitor.
😁
Biltema, horrors of horrors. Burn with holy fire and douse it with holy water
HAHA Biltema
I kinda felt that your German Patriotism made you go too hardass on this Swedish welder. I smelled the beef from miles away
motherjoon the world best welding equipement is stil of german make, FRONIUS, so.. then comes kempi ( finish) and then Miller and Lincoln(usa). esab, Air liquid, telwin and manny more are chinesium welders branded as american, german,french, italian...
Alexandru Alanei 🤔 Hmmm...i Think Esab WAS among the best before they outsourced production to Poland (Pro transformer machines) and China (inverter and home gamer machines). My old Smashweld 250 is still going strong after some 30 years... If i had the need to buy a new welder now, i would buy Kemppi or Fronius (if i had the money)