Help identifying and old welder???

[MoonDog]

so I moved into a place that's been vacant for over a year, dirt cheap just to get the county off the landlords back. The 1200sq/ft dirt floor shop in the property is full of garbage, scrap wood, and TOOLS! I asked the landlord about it all and he said "hey, you're taking the place 'as is' so dealing with it is up to you" Fine by me!

Anyway I found this welder. I can't find a model number on it (the info plate is pretty corroded) but it says 400V 3phase and has independant controlls for voltage and current. It also has two push buttons labeled Start and Stop. I'm not sure what the cylindrical part is, I can almost see what looks to be a motor or windings inside,

I've never seen one like this before, can anyone give me some insight to what it is? Ih and I've tried searching around on google but havent found anything of much help.

http://www.aracnet.com/~jibeaux/DCP_2922.JPG
http://www.aracnet.com/~jibeaux/DCP_2923.JPG
http://www.aracnet.com/~jibeaux/DCP_2924.JPG

[thelbz]

There used to be a welder like that where i used to work. It was one sweet machine worked as good as a machine 30 years newer my boss said if you find one pick it up because they work forever just blow out all the crap on the windings and put in some new brushes.

[MoonDog]

Windings and brushes? so this thing does have some kind of motor or generator in it?

hmmm, rotary phase converter mabey?

[andyr354]

An AC motor spins a DC generator for welding.

[roverjohn]

Thats just an old timey motor welder. The homemade TIG welders people make out of car alts is the same sort of thing. The reason people like them is because the flywheel effect of the spinning motors allows for super high instantainious power when you first strike the arc. If your new space is wired for 400volt three phase give it a try. It does look like the current control knob is a little disolved(?). When I first got out of MTU in the late seventies I interviewed at a bunch of old line manufacturing companies and they always had these things sitting around still being used after decades of use You'd still see them today but it's much cheaper to have the welder be transformer based. The very first TIG machines were just one of those with a gas bottle and a torch and I still hear people raving about how nice the old motor driven TIGs were. The other thing cool about this is that, I guess, it could be modified to be gas powered if the motor winding could be seperated from the generator end.
John...