Your machine picked a bad time for this to happen, considering tomorrow is Thanksgiving here, so members like Duane may be busy with family and friends much of the day.
Sounds to me like an electronics control circuit problem, so I doubt trying to test (comparing) stick welding in + and - polarity would tell anything. I wonder if hooking an analog DC voltage meter to the output, as you change the Balance, would show any change? If it is the balance circuit, no idea what components to check, besides perhaps connections to boards.
Maybe tomorrow I can see what that last test shows on my old (mid-1980's?) Syncrowave 250, if only out of curiosity.

 

It welds in TIG perfectly fine based on what little trials I did today just to rule that out.

 

....
It’s a 350LX pre slant front.
Last time I welded aluminium with it...everything worked fine. Went to weld some [aluminum] today ... it’s welding like an absolute dogs breakfast. It’s like it has no cleaning action at all across the balance range. ...

Going to check everything. Have tried different tungsten, Different gas flow, of course made sure my aluminium was clean.

It welds in TIG perfectly fine based on what little trials I did today....

I don't understand; in the first post you said it doesn't TIG weld aluminum (no cleaning) and you contradict that in the last post. Can you enlighten me? Did it start working right again? Or, was today using steel, not aluminum?

 

That is what I call a typo. My apologies what I meant to say it Tigs perfectly fine in DC. But I mistakenly left out the context my apologies

 

I have a Syncrowave 250. Since it’s been awhile according to your post, it is as likely an operator error as a machine error (no offense intended, I have same experience).

Go through the manual to check all settings. Mine may be different but set HF to continuous. Mine has a HF intensity control behind access door. Set it as low as possible.

Hopefully you just have overlooked a switch setting - easy to do.

If not, one of the tech guys will be here and help you out soon.

Happy thanksgiving from here!

 

I have a Syncrowave 250. Since it’s been awhile according to your post, it is as likely an operator error as a machine error (no offense intended, I have same experience).

Go through the manual to check all settings. Mine may be different but set HF to continuous. Mine has a HF intensity control behind access door. Set it as low as possible.

Hopefully you just have overlooked a switch setting - easy to do.

If not, one of the tech guys will be here and help you out soon.

Happy thanksgiving from here!

That's always a good first place to start. The " Very black very sooty." comment implies something else like gas problems or the metal having a film of polymer, or being porous and impregnated by oil, but the No Cleaning part wouldn't (I think) be connected to that. If it is a metal or gas problem, I'd expect the last test [DC(+)] to show it.
My turkey got cooked early; I'm thankful for having good food and being mentally and physically able to do (and enjoy doing) all the outside work that seems to never end, work I have been and will be doing again when done typing here.

 

You might read through my old thread. It may give you some ideas what to look for.

https://weldingweb.com/vbb/threads/291861-Syncrowave-250-need-help-with-HF

 

No cathodic etching, WAG is no AC in one direction. I've got a limited understanding of Syncrowave, never been into the bowels of one. You don't have EP share of AC.

 

So I’ll try to do my best to explain it. You strike your arc it does it’s typical noisy AC thing. Instead of getting a nice cleaning action it fuzzes up the surface but very narrow. Which doesn’t change with cup size or balance adjustment.

If you leave it long enough the aluminium will collapse on itself and melt but the oxide layer will float on the surface. No shiny puddle forming.

If you try to bump it by really stomping it to get through the oxide layer it just explodes as it’s not actually cleaning anything.

I was talking to TXSVIKING of YouTube fame he said to check the power cable on the torch. He has had this happen and in his case it was a munted power cable.

 

WELL, you clearly aren't using enough flux.

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Haha that’s a good one.

 

This may sound really stupid, but can you AC stick weld with it?

I see your missing the cleaning cycle of the AC frequency, but is it limited to Tig or All welding.

Also items can be very bad ground, bad tungsten, wrong tungsten, settings for EP way off, but it seems like it an internal component issue.



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The issues you mention in your last sentence are very true issue that could be happening which I did check at the start. There was initially a bad ground issue which I corrected straight away.

As for stick welding. A few have asked that and I honestly at this moment have no way to check. This machine is dedicated to TIG welding. While I do need a stinger at some point I’m going to rule out a bunch of things before buying one just to see.

 

Zirconiated? Pure? I only ever ran 2% lanthanated (blue) in my syncrowave, and it ran great, without balling up.

 

I like keeping things seperate between different metals. I’m really not a fan of one size fits all.

 

If you really think your balance is off you can try swapping cables to see if you can weld aluminum. Had a reversed cable once on a TIG machine :

View attachment ACTIG test1.jpg

It might be stuck in a more usable setting with cables reversed.

Yes, even old transformer welders need electronic repairs occasionally. Hopefully you can get it sorted.

Cheers

 

If you really think your balance is off you can try swapping cables to see if you can weld aluminum. Had a reversed cable once on a TIG machine :

View attachment 1746171

It might be stuck in a more usable setting with cables reversed.

Yes, even old transformer welders need electronic repairs occasionally. Hopefully you can get it sorted.

Cheers

Yeah that seems to me a common fault cables swapped. But I’m not sure how one would do that on my machine. Cables are bolted onto studs and setup as they were the day I setup the machine.

I’m off on medical leave this week so it’s getting a full strip down (within reason). I was talking to the industrial electronics repair place 5 minutes from me yesterday and they said they can take care of any board repairs that may be needed or if not they can just give a general component fitness health check of the boards.

 

Best way to test the welder is with a LOAD Bank and a o-scope.
That way you can see if all for SCRs are firing evenly. The balance control does not change the volts to the positive or negative half of the AC waveform. It changes the time of the positive and negative pulse. More cleaning is just more time in the positive half cycle. If this is a vertical face and not a slant face welder. the pcb is obsolete from miller. Have the pcb repair place be very careful to not damage the memory chip or the processor on the pcb. they are not made anywhere. and you have no way to get Miller programming to put back in the memory chip.
Most pcb repair shops will not touch these pcbs because of this.
Yes this old welder is controlled by a baby computer.

 

Yeah I figured there would be things like that to be careful of.

 

This sounds like arc rectification. It was pretty obvious on my Linde HeliArc 250HF sine wave machine but it is supposed to be less of a problem on square wave machines with balance control. Even with more balance, it can still be a problem. There several ways to deal with it, but I will just post a link about it.

https://www.clintonaluminum.com/what-is-arc-rectification/

 

I found a problem, according to the part number in the manual the points are the same as in the Dynasty 700. Will get some new ones and clean all this up, new fasteners and clean up the corrosion.

View attachment 928E9177-57FB-411D-990E-C6956675E6E7.jpg

 

This got put a bit of the back burner while I sorted some health stuff and had a surgery among other things. While I at it over christmas I ordered all new points assembly and everything so now that I am a bit more "alive" will put it all back together. While I am at it just because I am in there I am going to replace the gas line hose inside the machine logic being hose doesn't last forever and this machine is 20 years old.

But what is kind of funny and will confirm sometime soon when I have the energy to take care of it. But I talked about all this with the Air Liquide rep and asked him what the likelihood of a contaminated bottle would be. He said it would be incredible rare but has happened. He said just when I get a chance take it back and have them flag it as a potential contamination and they will check.

I just this last week in the middle of me going through my surgery stuff got an email from the Air Liquide guy asking for the bottle information. He emailed me today confirming that they did in fact have a bad batch of argon bottles and for me to swap mine out.

 

Thanks for the update. Glad to hear you're doing better. Here's hoping that bad gas is in fact your problem. :drinkup:

 

Here's hoping that bad gas is in fact your problem. :drinkup:

Oh I always have that problem, just usually of a more brown variety.

 

I forgot to update this for anyone interested. So between new points and a new gas bottle everything is happy again.