Well, I've been getting into bigger projects lately and the 110v wire feed wasn't really cutting it anymore. I really prefer stick welding anyway, so I started searching craigslist. This bad boy popped up so I jumped on it. It's a twentieth century brand (from what I can tell, it later became just century and was bought by lincoln). It goes up to 310 amps for cutting, it's rated for 250 amps for welding. I don't see anything about welding AC or DC but the guy I bought it from said something about changing some wiring around. He had never used it, got it from an old guy and that's what the old guy told him...for what that's worth.

Anyone know any more about that or any other info related to the welder? All I know is it's heavy as hell and it kicked out our 30 amp breaker just flipping the switch. We are putting in a 60 amp dedicated to this bad boy, so that should be the end of those troubles. Any areas I should check out before I get into burning too many electrodes with it? I'm guessing the 110 outlet on the front is just for running a grinder or something similar?

It should tell you on the unit what kind of Input amps it draws.

60 might not be enough.

It might tell you on the serial number plate who it was made by..

Good luck:grinpimp:

Yeah, it says 52/59 amps input. We had an electrician come check it out and he's going to set it all up.

Well, got to finally use the thing last weekend. Runs beautifully. I only had regular 7018 rods on hand and this thing seems running AC. I was able to get down some nice beads with it, they were just a huge PITA to get started. Maybe I just had some crappy rods though, because it did seem to run fairly smoothly once I got an arc to take. Otherwise it was a ton of sticking. I really had to scratch back and forth fast and keep my arc length just perfect before I could get one to start burning in. Once I got a good puddle, I could go to town with it. All the other DC welders I've used were really easy, quick tap and pull back to a long arc until it gets going good, then down into the puddle. I'll have to pick up some 7018AC rods and see if it does any better with those.

The guy I bought it from got it from an old guy and never used it. The old guy told him it could be run as AC or DC, just needed to have some wires changed around inside. I pulled the cover off and didn't see any type of rectifier or inverter setup in there, but I'm not an expert on this kind of thing.

I can't seem to find ANY info at all about this thing, IIRC it's a model 41B.

Has anyone ever tried out the harbor freight inverters? I'm assuming they come with short leads to hook into the power taps and then you just run off of that?

It il be ac , has it two voltage out put lugs if it has the higher voltage one is for special rods like low hyd etc