My current welder is a Clarke MIG welder, I got it cheap off Gumtree from a place that was upgrading. It was a little rough, but after a clean it seemed to work well, and better than the old Wolf Aldi one that I was working with.
It's always lacked a little 'something' though, so it was time it got a bit of TLC. First off was the liner. It was a steel one originally, but I get the impression it was way past it's use by date. Me being a cheapskate that I am, I bought some net curtain wire for a pound!! It made a huge difference though, even feeding in the wire for the first time I could feel it moving so much easier. It also meant I could turn down the wire tension and the feed speed, which I always felt was higher than it should have needed to be.
The next job was the earth lead. It was definitely something that had never been replaced, and it never felt good with the way it could bend really easily at certain points. I reckon there were several weak points where some of the internals had broken. The clamp itself was also a cheap one, and I frequently found myself with arc points on the clamp where it hadn't quite contacted properly and made it's own weld.
Looking on the internet it seemed the done thing was to replace it with a Dinse connector and upgrade the lead. So that's what I did! In hindsight I should have taken more pictures, but here's the first. It's the offcuts of sleeve, showing the difference between the old wire (right) and the new (left);
Considering it's a 150A welder, and the new wire is rated to 200A, I have no idea what the old wire was even doing there!!
The main challenge with this was that it was crimped directly to the copper winding on the transformer inside the welder. What I did was cut the old cable off about an inch away from the crimp, then open up the copper wires. Once I'd done the same with a length of new wire, I slid them inside each other then soaked the whole thing in solder to give it as good a connection as I could make. Two layers of heat shrink sleeving and the original woven protector over the joint and I was happy with the result.
The next stage was to fix the Dinse connector to the case. This worked surprisingly well, with nice big screw clamps for the wires. I'd bought a pack of five terminals all rated at 200A, and it was just a case of screwing everything down. This is the outside of the case now;
It even fitted in the same location as the old grommet, right down to the keyway that stops it rotating as the cable is clamped on.
The last stage was to make up the cable. So dinse plug on one end, and the new earth clamp on the other. It really was that easy. This is the new earth clamp now;
And that's it. Of course, at the moment I'm making body panels out of aluminium, so there isn't much welding to be done. Still, I'm looking forward to giving it a go.
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