Cleaning of the welder itself

[Jules The Great]

Hello all,

I would like to know what is recomended for cleaning the inside of the welder. When I do any cutting or grinding I have the welder covered. Stuff still can get in there and on the vents on the sides of the welder I can see dust and stuff deposits.

Should I open up the welder and blow it off with compressed air to get any small buildup of metal particles cleaned out? How often should this be done?

[inthefrey]

Hello all,

I would like to know what is recomended for cleaning the inside of the welder. When I do any cutting or grinding I have the welder covered. Stuff still can get in there and on the vents on the sides of the welder I can see dust and stuff deposits.

Should I open up the welder and blow it off with compressed air to get any small buildup of metal particles cleaned out? How often should this be done?

I guess this would depend on how dusty the environment stays. Just be careful not to pull anything lose, and be VERY CAREFUL nothing is pinched between the case when it goes back together. A pinched wire almost always results in a 4-week trip to Alaska...

[Brian Ski]

Easy on the fan. Blowing dust into the bearing will cause it to get noisy and then go out. Ask me why I know??? At least from past experience from fans... Keeping the cooling fins clear (should be some) always is a good idea. I guess it depends on how much you use it.

I guess you could also introduce dust into the potentiometers and make them noisy and erratic. So I would clean maybe once a year but be easy and don't cause more trouble. Maybe as often as you clean out a computer. Ever see the inside of one of those?????

[zoama]

You don't want metal particals building up on the circuit boards at all. Be sure the power is off when you blow the machine out and only use enough pressure to get the job done.
Also try to position your work so that sparks, chips and slag are thrown well away from the welder and let the welder run for 10 minutes after welding so that the heated internals can be cooled by the fan.

[Tinker]

Just a thought if you're forced to operate the welder in a dusty/dirty environment... I've seen some electronic equipment (scopes, etc.) that were fitted with intake filters of one sort or another. They've ranged from these fairly open foam or plastic mesh types to some little pleated paper styles, something like a furnace filter. Not sure if you would be able to come up with something that would meet the filtering requirements without overly restricting the airflow but it may be something to play with if you were really running into dust and dirt problems.

[Brian Ski]

I've seen some electronic equipment (scopes, etc.) that were fitted with intake filters of one sort or another.

This was brought up in another post and Everlast said not to do it. It could overheat the machine if you cranked the power up. I thought it would be a good idea though...

[Jules The Great]

The problem would be the size of the filter would have to be huge for the flow requirements. That is most likely why Everlast suggested not to do it as most people would probably try to put a filter the size of the vent on when it would need to be much larger.

[kenwhite]

Unfortunately clean air filtering means a reduction in duty cycle and/or possible failure based on the current cooling design. My guess is the primary reason for not offering filtered air is that many customers probably would not be diligent in cleaning/replacing the filter and reliability issues would occur. If you deide to blow off the circuit boards with compressed air, make sure the air is oil free or you would have been better off leaving it dirty...