Sp 250

admin

I acquired this Lincoln Idealarc SP 250, It has got a REAL anoying HUM/ BUZZ sound. It has the push button digital screen.  Are they all like that or is there something wrong with it? It welds fine but that noise drives me NUTS!!  Any help?  thanks  Scott
Reply:Originally Posted by sgoreI acquired this Lincoln Idealarc SP 250, It has got a REAL anoying HUM/ BUZZ sound. It has the push button digital screen.  Are they all like that or is there something wrong with it? It welds fine but that noise drives me NUTS!!  Any help?  thanks  Scott
Reply:ive blown it out, doesn change the noise problem, ive never heard a wire feed sound like this.
Reply:Does it have a big-*** transformer? I think they can hum sometimes. I'd open it up, plug it in and look around, see if you can locate what is doing it.Emphasis on LOOK around, keep your hands in your pockets. And remember capacitors (big tubular thingies with terminals on top) can zap you even after the machine is unplugged. - John
Reply:I have an sp250 , and I love it . Once a few years ago , it quit. The capacitor bank burnt out. I was lucky , my friend ran (manager) a welding supply and he got Lincoln to pay for repairs , (lincoln said it should not have quit) it runs as good as new, and that is fabulous. Mine always hums a little ,but ,it don't bother me. maybe it's the fan humming ? I believe that there is NO other mig (short arc) that is easy to use as a sp250(sp255)-no damned knobs to adjust,.......volts and  amps set together with one touch, along with the wire speed also . I have mine modified to hold two large cylinders -one argon(280cu ft. &one cO2-(about 500 cubic feet ) and i have a homemade mixer with regulators - most of the time i just use co2.[SIZE="5"Yardbird"
Reply:Thanks for the input guys. Still havent figured it out. Im telling you this thing is driving me nuts.
Reply:I don't know how much this may help, but I once fixed a number of industrial lights that were humming so loud you could barely think.  What we found was loose lamination sheets and flakes of hardened varnish at the ends of the laminated iron cores of the very large ballasts.We pulled out the large loose flakes of hardened varnish.  Some ballasts had broken welds where the last lamination sheet attached to the iron core.We clamped and re-welded them right where they had been welded before.  We then sprayed them down with a good heavy coating of an electrical varnish that we were able to find in aerosol cans.I don't know if they were quiet as new after that, but they were much quieter than they had been.Since transformer welders have a similar laminated iron core, your machine may have a similar problem.Another thing to check is how close the transformer iron is to the sheet metal case parts.  I have seen a couple of small wire feed welders that had been dropped.  The transformer mounting had bent and allowed the transformer to move very close to the case parts.  They hummed very loudly because the magnetism in the transformer was vibrating the sheet metal case parts.