help with my miller suitcase and lincoln sam-300???

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Hey all, I recently bought a lincoln sam-300 welder, actually a nice machine. Anyway, I have my bobcat 225 on my truck but needed more of a welder for our machines at work when they break down. Last project was when we had to rebuild the tip of the tooth on our shear, about 3 in broke clean off and we had to fab up a new tip base so the new cutting edge had a base to weld it on to. Worked the heck out of my poor bobcat so I got this to ease the pain the bobcat had to go through. That said, this machine has a linde wire attachment that came with it, but it has seen it's better days years ago.  I have a suitcase attachment for my bobcat, 8vs I am thinking it is. For some reason it don't like to work on the bobcat, seems like it is underpowered, feels like it would be better to just wad the wire up and throw it at my work, would stick better!My question is, since this lincoln has a constant voltage selector for the wire feed that came with it, is there any reason I can't hook up my suitcase to the lincoln? I realize that the linde has a wire loom that runs with the gas line to the linde box, but the suitcase is what I would call stand alone so shouldn't it work with the constant voltage side of the lincoln just like it should on my bobcat?Any thoughts on this would be most helpful as I am always concerned about hooking up something like this without knowing as much about it as I can before trying it. This may all sound simple and self explanatory and I apologize if I sound stupid asking, but I would rather sound stupid and know I got the right answer from someone that knows more about this than smoking my suitcase or the lincoln because I was too proud to ask.Thanks again for your time and help, this forum has always been the best for finding help when I really need it.
Reply:Just set the sam 300 up for CV welding. connect the feeder to the CV terminals.You may have to put a switch on the contactor control terminals. To cause the contactor to pull in. You will need the check and see how the auto terminal is wired. There are two terminals, one is marked auto and the other is marked stick.If the auto terminal comes from the stick terminal through a contactor. Then you can connect the feeder to the stick terminal and not worry. If there is a contactor AND an inductor, then you will need to use the auto terminal. The 8VS will work on DC weld voltage up to 100VDC.You can get an owner's manual from Miller's web site and with the sam 300 Code number you can get the correct owner's manual from Lincoln web site. Could not speak to your welder because there are a lot of different versions made over the years. I need the code number to pull up the correct information. If you need diagrams you need to call Lincoln with the code number and they will fax or e-mail them to you.
Reply:The Suitcase VS feeders are voltage-sensing, so you shouldn't have any issues hooking them up to most any DC power source, including the SAM.  Now if you have a Suitcase RC feeder, that's a different story.  If you're ever in doubt, call Lincoln's tech support and talk to Bob Crow.  He's familiar with all of the old SAM machines and helped me get mine running like a top.What size wire are you running?  I would think the Bobcat would run the VS fine until you got into larger wire sizes.  You may have other issues.
Reply:I tried running .035 wire on both flux core and gas and neither would do worth a damn for welding. Here is a fine example of the result, ever try welding anything thicker than 1/4" steel with a 110v mig? I am not joking, when I started using it I was so embarrassed I put it all away, pulled out the rods and made beautiful welds to hide the birds&*t I started.  I have tried everything I could think of, wire speed, hi/low, gas pressure, you name it. I thought maybe it was my bobcat, so I had it checked for output and running speed and LWS said it was fine, although I am not exactly sure they knew what they were doing but it does weld fine on stick so I assume they did check it.
Reply:Are you having issues running the suitcase with the Bobcat or the SAM?There is a switch inside the suitcase that sets CC or CV operation. Is it set for CV if you are trying to run it that way? I've never tried to run my VS feeder with the switch set to the wrong setting, but it's something to double check if it was working fine and now is suddenly having issues..No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth! Ronald Reagan
Reply:I am having trouble running the vs with the bobcat. I tried it with my SAM, but found I have no output on the CV side of if and haven't had time to dig in to it and see why yet.