Lincoln tombstone buzzbox

IA Roy

Well-known Member
I have an old lincoln and my son does also. He claims his is much easier to hold an arc with than mine. Any ideas why one would work better than the other? I have never used his but have no reason to doubt him.
 
Two ideas could be involved. Try your rods on his welder, and his on yours. Moisture or brand cn be way different. Measure the open circuit voltage and weld voltage at the same settings, if the same it is the same. Jim
 
Are they the same Lincoln model, I mean they made hundreds of different ones. Are they ac or dc? Also check power input voltage, on the high or low of voltage range makes them run different. Also are they fed with heavy enough wire? For the distance from the panel. Alot of variables can affect that
 
How strong or clean is your ground clamp. I still have one bought in the early 1960's and when the flame wanted to go dim I would wiggle the ground clamp to bring it back up.
 
Years ago my brother in law dumped his Lincoln because it would stick rods and not weld right in general and bought a new something else. I took his Lincoln off his hands and it worked perfectly at my shop, Hmmm. Come find out his new welder didnt work any better than the Lincoln, Hmmm. One day I was out as hid shop and he was trying to weld and was having a heck of a time. I noticed that every time he would strike an arc the lights dimmed. SO I took some voltage readings and at the plug the voltage was dropping like LOTS. A reading at the panel confirmed that he had two problems. His receptacle had been wired with too light a wire and his lead in cable was also tool light for his 100 AMP panel and loads. When bother were fixed hos new welder worked perfectly,, the Lincoln still works perfectly i nmy shop too, LOL

Just something to check
 
Input voltage varies so if he is setting both welders on the same setting rather than adjusting for the job that could be the issue. When I moved to the house I live in j9w I had to turn all my welders up one notch, or a bunch of amps depending on the welder, to get the same welds I used to get.
 
I have one, used it forever and thought it was the best until I inherited my dads Miller 225 when he died. Finally hooked it up and found it is much smoother arc and easier to use than the Linclon 225, dosen't make sense, I use the same power and the same rods. It is the same no matter what metal or rods I use, both have only a transformer inside the box and the Linclon has much
heavier welding leads and heavy duty clamp/rod holder. Some things you just can't explain.
 
I lived in town and when I needed something welded at the farm I'd haul my welder out there and use it. Always in the daytime. We finally moved out there, and one night I fired up the welder to make or repair something. I heard my wife hollering from the house - the lights were going brown in the house, fridge was dying down, and the TV would drop to a little square on the screen. I couldn't tell there was anything wrong when my welding hood was down. I got the REA folks out there and they put in a larger transformer, plus moved it closer to the house - the original one was 200 feet out in the pasture for some reason. I have to admit that I couldn't tell there was anything funny about the welder itself. The shop was closer to the transformer than the house, so maybe I was getting all of the goody before it got to the her, ha.

I think you'd have to compare those two welders side by side from the same wall plug to make a valid comparison.
 
That's a myth that won't die. No Lincoln tombstone buzz box ever had copper windings---not according to Lincoln, at least. On the other hand, what do they know, right? The Idealarc was the model which was made with copper sometimes, and aluminum at other times. The Lincoln welding products representative I talked to about this issue said that they had determined that there was no discernible difference in arc quality in any Idealarc stick welders. Maybe so, but in my experience, people believe what they want to believe, bless their hearts.

Stan
 
Well I would check the voltage at your welder plug when welding. IF it is not dropping unplug your welder and take the covers off. The Lincoln tombstone welders use a rotating contact lever to change amperage. This gets corroded. Clean the lever and the contacts up. You will find the welder will work much better.
 
Just a thought is your Dad's welder one of the older 180 amp welders. If so it would have a lower open circuit voltage which would make it harder to strike an arc without it sticking. Versus the newer Lincoln 225 with higher open circuit voltage. I have a newer Lincoln 225 A.C / D.C & I have My Grandad's old 180 A.C. P&H welder (which has copper windings) The newer Lincoln set on A.C. Is a lot easier to weld with than the P&H. Just my thoughts. Dave F.
 
yea I think you have the answer already. I had a customer who was cussing the new plasma cutter,he said it did not cut 3/4 stuff worth a hoot(440V 3ph) I asked him to try it without the 70ft extinction cord. The machine works great now.
 
Looks like the same model. Mine is probably older. Both 225 amp ac. I have never used his. My fil gave or traded it to him for labor. My fil also had trouble when he used mine when he didn't have his hooked up and used mine. I have never tried to diagnose the difference. I will check voltage under load sometime when someone else is around. I will take some of my rod to his place next time i think of it. One of you're replies has to be the answer! Thanks for your time and thoughts.
 
The transformer windings are coated with a copper colored metallic lacquer. People open up their tombstone welders and see that and say that proves that they have a welder with copper windings. Is that the reason you say your father-in-law's welder is copper wound, or do you have some other reason to think so? You don't have to reply. It makes no difference to me what you believe, and it makes no difference to you what I believe, right?
 
That's interesting about copper and aluminum wound Lincoln tombstones.
My dad gave a 225A one fore Christmas in the early '60's, then several years later I heard that they started using Al. for the windings. Never heard that they all were Al. wound.

Maybe some of us ought to weight our's and post on here how much they weight. I would do mine, but it's going to be April before I can.

Dusty
 
Hi, I have a Lincoln buzz box. I have a normal range plug for it about 20 ft of wire. It sticks like heck some time s but I found a rod called 'arctec 222'. It doesn't stick and welds smooth with beautiful bead. I am not a skilled welder. Do you think my power cord is too light. Ed Will Oliver BC wine capital
 
Dusty, As an objective approach, weighing welders would be immeasurably preferable to hearsay, but I suspect there might be too many variables involved. Copper is about four times as heavy as aluminum, but it's also a better conductor, so wouldn't it take more aluminum to yield equal results? Another problem is that the welders would be different from each other in other ways besides the metal of the transformer windings. Some have wheels while others don't, they have different lengths and gauges of wire for the power supply, ground, and electrode holder cables, and different sizes and weights of ground clamp and electrode holder. Even if it were possible to control for these variables, there's the problem of the differences in scales. My body weight undressed is significantly different on my bathroom scale, the balance scale at my doctor's office, and the balance scale at the gym. Still, I like your thinking.

Stan
 
Ed, as the majority of the posts here indicate, inadequate input power would be the likeliest reason for the situation you describe, except that you don't provide some important information. For instance, what other electrodes have you used? Is your welder AC/DC or AC only? Going only on the basis that you say you aren't a skilled welder, is it possible that you aren't aware that 7018 rods are very difficult to use with an AC welder, and 6010 virtually can't be run AC at all? Whatever else its faults, 6013 is arguably the most forgiving rod for striking and holding an arc. If your welder doesn't perform as well with 6013 as with this other exotic product you've found, then I'd say yes, you need to look into your power delivery to the welder. If you do have an AC welder, and the problem is that you've been trying to run difficult rods, try using 6011, 6013, 7014, and 7018AC. 6013 and 7014 are easy to run with an AC welder, the other two are not as easy---only easier than their DC counterparts 7018 and 6010.

Stan
 
Contrary to my reasoning it holds an arc better at higher amps. Wouldn't voltage drop be more pronounced at higher amps than lower? Or is there something else I have not considered?
 
1) A Lincoln AC225 never had copper windings they were always aluminum. Lincoln AC180 did have copper windings. Easiest way to tell is the 225 has a cooling fan and the 180 does NOT.

2) Welders are really nothing more than glorified power tranformers. The convert roughly 230 volts 50 amps Household Input power into something more useful for welding like 80 volts OCV 225 amps output. So one household could be 220 volts from the utility company and the other household could be 240 volts that alone will make the welders perform differently. Proper sized wire to receptacle will also be factor. Honestly even if you do understand this concept the easiest thing to is simply take both welders to same household and compare them that way at the same household with the same brand rods.

3) If both machines still weld way differently at the same household then my guess would be the contacts on the amp selector switch need cleaned on the unit that does not work so well. That selector switch is serviceable and for essentially free with care. There are HOW to's on the web and parts are available on the rare chance you might need any.

4) If all is found to be good in the selector then chalk it up to getting one of the generations that did not perform as good. While that welder has been in production over 60 years there were some slight changes here and there that made certain vintages not quite as good. Oddly enough it is mostly the units that fall in the middle of the timeline that seem to be the worst performers.
 
Hi Stan, thanks for the welding rod tips. My welder is ac only. I forgot to mention the maker of arctec 222 or at least the dealer is Liquid Air. I will try some 6013. Cheers, ed will.
 
Thanks for clearing that up. Although I don't remember specifically, I suspect that when I asked Lincoln about whether some of their 225 amp tombstone welders had copper windings, I didn't even know that there was an older, 180 amp version of that welder. Later, I got one of those and wondered whether some previous owner had removed the fan for some reason. Although I didn't use it much, what I noticed about it was that the lack of a fan made no difference in its performance, and that it had one of the sweetest arcs of any welder I had ever used. At the time I thought it was either some fluke, or possibly just my imagination. But if some of those welders had copper windings, maybe that's what it was.

Stan
 
Ed Will - the maker of Arctec 222 is 'Arctecalloys'. Have you tried any of their other rods? I also like their Supercast 8000.
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Higher amps would draw more and drop voltage more, but the delivered welding voltage and amps would be higher than they were on the lower setting. Jim
 

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