Had a chance after work today to call Miller Tech Support on the phone. They were very friendly, but were not able to really dig into much troubleshooting with a model/serial number this old. i was told that Miller had limited info because during this time the engineers were doing a things a variety of ways before standardizing things better. The tech had me check ohms resistance on the upper left terminals of the circuit board, which showed about 1.3 ohms resistance. We also switched those wires and had the same results. I spent a good 15 minutes poking my head and fingers all around inside the guts of the machine making sure connections seemed good, and checking terminals for tightness. I had done some research on here, and learned that occasionally people have had success in taking apart the insides of the "range/polarity switch" and cleaning the contacts. So I did this, and was super excited to see that there was gunk and junk that needed to be cleaned off.
Dirty:
Cleaned up:
Sadly, once everything was cleaned and reassembled, not only was I not not able to weld aluminum, but I can't weld anything. The tungsten/torch now only produces an incredibly weak, dismal, skinny speck of a blue electricity at times, and usually it does not produce any electricity at all. It made an electric noise, not the usual sizzle noise, but more of a frequency "tone". To add insult to injury, I smelled electrical burning and looked over to see a small puff of smoke coming out of the front of the machine, right where the "electrode/gas out" torch hose is. Turned everything off, and unplugged the machine.
smoke looked like it was coming from here and also there was a touch of soot and a smokey electrical burning smell to the soot:
I am currently really bummed out and pretty defeated. Had a working machine for steel and all I was hoping to do was to get it to weld aluminum too. Sadly, things went backwards, and now nothing works. Now I am trying to learn electrical schematics (which is way over my head) to rectify this. Kinda hoping this is fixable; spent a LOT of money on parts for the welder, gas cylinders, an entire electrical sub panel in the garage, and now I am unsure what to even do next. I have a limited knowledge of electronics, but am pretty quick to learn ( I wire and build police cars for a job).
What about a Miller Welding repair technician or shop? I went on the Miller website and it pulled up the local shop 4.4 miles away, but instead of "tech service" it is listed under "sales". I also can NOT afford an expensive repair bill or someone just throwing parts at the machine in hoped of getting it running. Would love to fix it as I had started to get excited for all these upcoming welding projects I could tackle in the nearby future. Very bummed out at the moment.
misc pics:
what is this and what does the button do. If i press the button in, it does not stay in, so what is the purpose of the button/device?