Found the limit of my mig

[Ron66]

I have a Century135 mig welder that I have owned for about 12 years now. It served me well but this weekend I had a pretty big job to do assembling some products I sell and welded for about 1.5 hours almost non-stop. Then I noticed that the arc and wire feed would just start to stop intermittently in the middle of a weld. I'm pretty sure I was hitting the dutycycle limit as this unit is only rated at 20%. If I waited about a minute in between 3/4" welds it was ok. Does this sound right? I never had this happen before. I expected if I ever hit the dutycycle limit it would just shut down.

[performance]

It does sound about right for a transformer machine. You may have done terminal damage to it. The fan should keep running to cool everything. Ours wills top welding, though the wire will continue to feed.

[sportbike]

You may want to give it a once over and clean the insides. It was likely overloading the welder, but at 12 years old, it likely has a bit of dust and dirt built up. Fan could be on its way out as well and not flowing enough air if the bearings are getting sketchy.

[Kendall]

I've thought that I was going to hit the duty cycle on my Imig 200 a few times when I was pushing hard to get a project done but I've not had the duty cycle light come on yet. Apparently this machine has a higher duty cycle than I do!

[Ron66]

Yeah I was thinking about pulling it apart and giving it a good cleaning. Good thing to keep me out of trouble this weekend.