firepower welder

Firepower is a POW-Con product??? You might want to confirm that I could be wrong.

Without a better discription of the problem start with basics. Check the drive rolls for burrs or incorrect wire depth seat.

You will get some curl to the wire after the drive rolls but not very much. If the wire is balling here then take off the input guide and check for bore wear.

Pictures are worth a thousand words but a good discription of the problem would also help.

T_Bone

No to lubing the drive rollers. Adjusting the tension is the only thing you want to do there, and if you didn't change it when you changed out the wire it probably isn't part of the problem. The tension on the roll of wire makes a difference but it generally causes only two specific problems if it's not right: Failure to feed smoothly if it's too tight, or bird-nesting in front of the drive roller if it's too loose.

Could you have set the tension on the wire roll so great that the drive rollers pull it apart? This seems like clutching at straws, but I'm running out of ideas. What kind of wire is it, solid or flux core? Maybe it's a bad roll of wire. I've seen more than one 33lb or larger roll get thrown away at the community college where I assist the welding instructor. Also, describe this "sharp curl" a little more.

Stan

Any chance you've got the roll of wire on backwards so that the wire has to come over the top and make a hard turn before going through the rollers rather than feeding straight in from the bottom of the roll? Just a thought.

Stan

My prediction is that when the smoke clears and the dust settles, your $0.04 diagnosis is going to turn out to be just about right on the money. Spitz says the the wire is breaking BEFORE it get into the "hose." Unless we assume he is describing the problem incorrectly, that would rule out any cause downstream of the drive roller assembly. It seems pretty obvious to me that if the wire isn't getting into the "hose", then the liner and the tip can't be part of the problem. Like you, I think it's the tension on the roll of wire. That's the one thing that you can't simply leave alone when you change the wire, and an occasional weldor might go for long periods between changes, and not think to test the tension or count turns of the tensioner nut when taking it off. Guess how I know.

All the best, Stan