Miilermatic 185......

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inkjunkie

inkjunkie

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Have had this thing sitting in the corner of the garage for years now. Been wanting to build me a table so I can play around/practice TIG welding so I figured might as well clean it up a bit. I took it outside and blew all the cobwebs out of it. Noticed that the wire was "loose" in the gun. Tension is adjusted correctly. Figured the liner was probably shot so took the old one out, ran some air thru the gun and installed a new one. Put it back together and wire is still loose. Best way to describe it is release the trigger to stop the wire from feeding. You can push the wire back into the gun a good 1/2" or so. Needless to say the mess that occurs if you try to weld with it....Any ideas?
 
Did you cut your liner too short or could the feeder tube between the drive roll and the whip be missing? Is the whip pushed in all the way? Something is causing your wire to be able to give somewhere
 
Scotty67 said:
Did you cut your liner too short or could the feeder tube between the drive roll and the whip be missing? Is the whip pushed in all the way? Something is causing your wire to be able to give somewhere
Click to expand...
Cut the liner to the same length as the old one, which was the one it came with. Feeder tube is there, whip is pushed in all the way.
 
Look real close at the rollers, they are marked for the diameter of the wire.
Make sure they match the wire that you are using.
 
.023 wire in an .035 liner?

Sorry, just a guess. I'm really new to the whole welding deal.
 
sireland67 said:
Look real close at the rollers, they are marked for the diameter of the wire.
Make sure they match the wire that you are using.
Click to expand...

good point, can you make the wire slip when it is feeding out of the gun? How do you know you have the tension set up correctly?
 
sireland67 said:
Look real close at the rollers, they are marked for the diameter of the wire.
Make sure they match the wire that you are using.
Click to expand...
Will check the rollers. Might just pick up the remaining feeder parts when we go to town on Wednesday, the Napa I deal with is just down the road from a Miller dealer....

Revhendo said:
.023 wire in an .035 liner?

Sorry, just a guess. I'm really new to the whole welding deal.
Click to expand...
Nope, both are .023.
It had this problem before I replaced the liner. It had the original liner in it with .035 wire. Kind of hard to weld with it when the wire is floating around a bit....
 
Ink I repair them for a living I will look in to it tomorrow and come up with some ideas for you to try. Phone is running out if battery now
 
Do you have a tip on the gun? Is it the correct size hole in it? I am not aware of different sized liners, only different size tips.
Are you using, or trying to use gas? In my former welder the feed wheels had two grooves. A smooth groove for using solid mig wire, and a knurled groove for use with flux cored wire.
I'll bet whatever it is will turn out to be simple. You might take it to the welding shop and ask them to look at it.
C
 
Scotty67 said:
good point, can you make the wire slip when it is feeding out of the gun? How do you know you have the tension set up correctly?
Click to expand...
If I back off on the tension it will slip.The way it is adjusted now it does not slip. Just went by what the book says about adjusting it. I noticed in the book they also made mention of a tension gauge of some sort.
What I do not understand is it is tight down at the roller, it has a .023 liner with .023 wire and the wire sort of back pedals....
 
toplscuda said:
Ink I repair them for a living I will look in to it tomorrow and come up with some ideas for you to try. Phone is running out if battery now
Click to expand...
That would be great, thanks.....
clhyer said:
Do you have a tip on the gun? Is it the correct size hole in it? I am not aware of different sized liners, only different size tips.
Are you using, or trying to use gas? In my former welder the feed wheels had two grooves. A smooth groove for using solid mig wire, and a knurled groove for use with flux cored wire.
I'll bet whatever it is will turn out to be simple. You might take it to the welding shop and ask them to look at it.
C
Click to expand...
I do indeed have a tip on it, and it is a .023. I am running gas. I will look at the manual in regards to the feed rollers. Sure it is going to be something simple......Miller does have different size liners.....http://www.millerwelds.com/products/gunstorches/miller-guns/migmatic_accessories.php
 
Ok lets stat off with the simplest things first and we can go from there.
When you say it is back peddling are you talking about when you are trying to weld it seems like it is burning back to the tip?
If so look at two things. First one is the tension on the spool itself, if it is too loose when the spool spins around some excess wire will drop and then when the slack is taken up it will slow the feed down. Think of this like towing a car with a chain. when you keep the tension snug it is an easy pull but when you have a person in the tow car that doesn't know how to do that it gets pretty jerky.
Second, I know you said you replaced the liner recently but do this, Pull the liner back out of the gun and really look at it. The slightest kink/bend in the liner will cause this issue in a big way and it is very easy to do when pushing the new liner in the gun. If you lay it on the ground and see any kink in it at all replace it. They do make different size liners for guns and if you do have the 023 liner in it a slight kink is even more noticeable than if you were running an 035 liner in it. It doesn't hurt to run a larger liner in a gun as long as you are running the correct size tip. In my smaller rental welders they all have 045 liners in them that way when i send them out a customer can run 023 to 045 in them with the correct tip and diver roll without issue. In my larger wire feeders they all have 3/32 liners in them so they have that versatility
98% of the service calls I go on for feed issues are taken care of by these two things.
 
toplscuda said:
Ok lets stat off with the simplest things first and we can go from there.
When you say it is back peddling are you talking about when you are trying to weld it seems like it is burning back to the tip?
If so look at two things. First one is the tension on the spool itself, if it is too loose when the spool spins around some excess wire will drop and then when the slack is taken up it will slow the feed down. Think of this like towing a car with a chain. when you keep the tension snug it is an easy pull but when you have a person in the tow car that doesn't know how to do that it gets pretty jerky.
Second, I know you said you replaced the liner recently but do this, Pull the liner back out of the gun and really look at it. The slightest kink/bend in the liner will cause this issue in a big way and it is very easy to do when pushing the new liner in the gun. If you lay it on the ground and see any kink in it at all replace it. They do make different size liners for guns and if you do have the 023 liner in it a slight kink is even more noticeable than if you were running an 035 liner in it. It doesn't hurt to run a larger liner in a gun as long as you are running the correct size tip. In my smaller rental welders they all have 045 liners in them that way when i send them out a customer can run 023 to 045 in them with the correct tip and diver roll without issue. In my larger wire feeders they all have 3/32 liners in them so they have that versatility
98% of the service calls I go on for feed issues are taken care of by these two things.
Click to expand...
That is exactly what it is doing, burning back to the tip. I will pull the trigger with the lid open to verify that the spool is not to loose. I do not think it is, but I will double check it. And I will pull the liner out to make it has no kinks in it. Thanks.....I will let you know what I find.....
 
A couple more things to check are:
Is the spool of wire on upside down?
That could cause undue tension on the rollers causing them to bind the wire as it tries to feed it. Basically, it should be a straight shot through the rollers off the spool. The spool is usually underslung.
Also having the spool not mounted correctly will cause it to bind. It should roll smoothly.
What are your settings?
Too much voltage and not enough wire speed will cause a burn back condition.
Try turning the voltage down a bit and see what happens.
Too much wire speed and not enough voltage will cause the opposite of a burn back, which is ''stubbing'' of the wire while you weld.
If this doesn't do anything, then i bet it's a kinked liner.
Kinked and/or dirty liners will cause a lot of problems overall.
I hope this helps.
Tom.
 
Dartnut said:
A couple more things to check are:
Is the spool of wire on upside down?
That could cause undue tension on the rollers causing them to bind the wire as it tries to feed it. Basically, it should be a straight shot through the rollers off the spool. The spool is usually underslung.

The spool is underslung....

Also having the spool not mounted correctly will cause it to bind. It should roll smoothly.

It does indeed roll smoothly

What are your settings?

With the wellder turned off you can grab the wire and push it back into the gun, so the settings have nothing to do with what I am thinking is a problem.....

Too much voltage and not enough wire speed will cause a burn back condition.
Try turning the voltage down a bit and see what happens.
Too much wire speed and not enough voltage will cause the opposite of a burn back, which is ''stubbing'' of the wire while you weld.

I have tried welding with with low voltage/low wire speed, high voltage/low wire speed, low voltage/high wire speed and high voltage/high wire speed and the results are always the same, it wants to burn back into the tip. Which is why I am thinking the wire "back pedaling" into the gun is a problem.

If this doesn't do anything, then i bet it's a kinked liner.
Kinked and/or dirty liners will cause a lot of problems overall.
I hope this helps.
Tom.

Thanks for your input Tom, I am hoping it is just a kink in the liner.
Click to expand...

Just got to feed the hounds and I will go out and pull the liner out. I am going to give the feeder mechanism another looking at as well. I don't think it has anything to do with the feeder. Problem appears to be something after the pinch point. It is adjusted so with the gun held at an angle to a piece of wood it feeds without slipping, which is how the manual instructs you to adjust it. So I do not think it has anything to do with the feed assembly/tension.
 
The roller that is on the machine is stamped for .023-.035 wire. It is also a smooth grove....The liner was kink free, as far as I could tell. Hmmmmmm...................
 
Pulled the trigger with the lid open again. Noticed that the wire, pre-pinch point developed a slight looseness when the trigger was released. Cut the wire and turned spool by hand, had a fair amount of drag to it. Tightened the spool up some just to see what happens......no more burn back. Wire is still slightly loose in the gun with the tip in it but no where like it was. Will look for some more scrap to see what the hell happens.....Hopefully the problem is solved....I would like to Thank every one for there advice.....
 
You will always have a little push/pull with the wire when you grab it with your fingers. Thin wire, a liner that is a little larger so it feeds and 10 ft equals quite a bit of space to take up so 1/2" or so of movement is normal. Glad you found the issue now get out there and burn some stuff together..
Did this on my lunch break today.Had to notch the motor mount for the Jeep manifold to fit. Getting closer to setting that thing in the car.
66295701.jpg
 
Hi Doug,
sorry just getting to this as I've been going in at 4:00 a.m. every day this week and getting off at 2:30. Been exhausted and haven't really been on but to just check the messages my email showed me I had, didn't respond to any though.
Just reading what everyone else posted it looks like everything was covered that I would've suggested.
 
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