BOLTR: Vulcan MIG 215 | Harbor Freight Welder

gentlemen ladies all of the above none of the above and welders too you can always tell an old fabricator you just can't tell them much from the usual scumbags at the Hazzard fart no Vulcan MIG max 2:15 this is a hot glue gun for metal we have a quorum here in the Empire dirt and we have come to the consensus that welding metal is [ __ ] cool there's two kinds of people on the earth those that can weld and those that want to learn how to well take an angry Pixies outta yonder receptacle and jamming it through a gun getting an arc as bright as the Sun to weld melt and re solidify steel I have long advocated learning on a stick welder prior to this because on a stick welder you will get the learning curve it'll be real tough at first and then you'll just learn like a bastard if you start off with this guy and I have just brought one of these into the shop if you start off with this guy every new process that you learn is going to be a huge learning curve because this is so fergan easy but if you lose if you learn the stick welding first if you learn stick welding first then this is a piece of cake and TIG welding is a piece of cake if you'll learn this guy first then the stick you're [ __ ] you got to learn all over and and then you got to learn the TIG the boot better to get the stick welder also cheaper well you don't want to spend too much money on a hobby that you don't know it's gonna take you know some people don't like getting burnt your welding you're gonna get [ __ ] burnt your weld should sound like bacon but if they smell like bacon you're on fire welding is a skill is a fundamental process for two using just about any industry and it will it will put you in good stead no matter what your chosen vocation or profession being able to well pays dividends now this is my first foray outside of Lincoln or Miller into a and MIG welder and clipboard warriors will be jump up and down saying it's not big it's not metal inert gas its mag metal active gas because there's a bit of carbon dioxide in the gas and that reacts with the the steel in order to get rid of the it oxidizes that's that gray layer over your bead so mag welding but if you talk to anybody and you say you have a mag welder they'll look at you or ask a technical question about a mag welder they'll look at you like you're a [ __ ] welding inspector which is not a good thing so where the rubber meets the load is the most important first part and as I said I ran to 252 for about a decade off and on just for funsies and that was that was a Miller - 5 - that is the gold standard as far as I'm concerned and then then a couple years ago picked up a 211 was messing with a miller 211 and that thing was a [ __ ] piece of junk incredible piece of junk this Balkan is what they're trying to compare themselves to and for sure this vulcan is by far better than the 211 just on the on the monkey pulling the trigger side right out of the box that miller 211 the [ __ ] gun didn't work super super chintzy feeling and the trigger itself would auto lock like that wasn't a design feature it was because there was some flashing or some [ __ ] in there and if you put any kind of side load on it on the on the gun itself it would lock down and you'd spool out a whole bunch of wire big birds nest a wire until finally it's short circuited on the workbench or the ground clamp and then you'd have a red-hot PISA yeah bird's nest it was terrible I could not believe how shitty that that Miller was so this is a pleasant surprise because the gun itself is reasonably robust and for a kit this comes with the kit at 211 if you even want to use the Jesus thing you got to get a new gun right off the hop you got to get a decent gun we're into the handle and this we can see is a pretty new product here because we got 17 first month of 2017 and then we have all these other tabs they're looking to keep this in service right up until 2022 so we're the likely mold will last that long but well we'll see see in five years yeah in this case there's no markings no material markings it is very rigid extremely rigid so there's got to be some glass fiber reinforcing in there yeah a high amount of glass fiber reinforcing you can hear it when I cut it as far as the material I would guess that it's nylon but since there's no markings we got a trust to our sniffer now we'll get in there with the old blue heeler routine far more appropriate than the blue steel ER routine and you smell that it's smells just like a nylon rope so that is glass fiber reinforced nylon very stiff not bad at not bad at not melting in the spatter one thing I do not like about the gun is the cup the gas diffuser here is loosey-goosey on there it doesn't sit solid so when you strike the arc this starts kind of moving around and it's a little off-putting if you're trying it's just one more thing to kind of worry about this thing it doesn't fill you with confidence when the thing is moving around it's not like you're supposed to be resting on this or walking the cup or whatever but you know [ __ ] happens and you got to do what you got to do sometimes the switch totally shitty switch weird this is a custom built switch there's no micro switch in here so this would be this is bizarre they've made their own switch let's try and get that off so steak on connectors with some nice knot heat shrink but a little vinyl yeah a little bits of vinyl on there kind of yeah we can get that off very strange design decision made here where they've gone and made their own switch instead of getting a bog-standard micro switch what's in everything from every kettle in Christendom they've gone and made their own little contact switch so that to me is kind of that's really weird that they could do that for cheaper than getting a bog-standard switch and now of course yeah this isn't that great you see the affectation there there's a roll pin what keeps it located in in the handle but the roll pin is already all off kilter there and this is where this is where the two hundred pound gorilla meets the load so it's yeah I'd be surprised if this lasts for any amount of time yeah hopefully this is a consumable you can or a part you can buy and there's already some looseness in the hips over here in that pin bore it's already loose yeah well that's disappointing that ain't no [ __ ] bit at all the good thing about this gun is it's not proprietary there's no interchange or there's very good interchangeable with other brands all the tips are the same so if you need thicker wire you just change the tip and thread it in the reason it's coppers because molten steel molten iron is not wetting on copper now you still get it where it burns back and melts in and then solidifies but it should not weld itself on there if it does it's just in the surface porous the little spring here a little spring here it's a little bit small it seems like on the OD because you put it over as I said you put it over the OD onto that spring and the retention spring holds it real good but still loosey-goosey all over there and that we see on the back end something yeah pretty chintzy we got a little hop strap here a slice in the cable to break out the switch contacts and then I like chickens tape what they use for keeping in the ones and zeros of course this gets hot it gets it's going to get totally [ __ ] and disgusting in no time and then your cables gonna split all the way down here this is just this is a ha yeah we got a little bit higher cost here a little far better integrity tape this is glass fiber tape for high voltage cable splicing applications just happen to have in the box of tricks and this will this will put us in far better stead and disgusting this you know this vinyl tape just turns into a pile of goo oh excuse me teachable moment met this early yet I seize your piss my toenail do all dummies ooty tapas went rrz so to play when you come in somebody sharp you don't mess around and leave a mess okay Michelle you may sleep upon it what this is a welding gun do you want to learn how to weld yeah you're not too young four and a half four years old are you too young are you ready okay well we'll I'll I'll get a set up for you later okay nope right it's not quiet either but it is fun you take metal and you take electricity and you melt the metal and it sticks together it's like glue thank you here's a little straw man for those Instagram welders type stuck in the back be taking pictures of each other's rainbow weaves yeah you know the type so this is solid core wire and I put on the the serrated roller and I had a brain fart when I did that because at work any time the welders were running these they would always have serrated rollers that's because they're they're doing dual shield so they're doing spray transfer dual shield and then just had a brain fart so I got to swap that over to to the correctly sized ah plot v-groove roller if I ever get that off before we get her up ended get get into the guts of your ass over teakettle you see a problem here plastic hinges so they're fine under normal use but welders never get normal use so what will happen is say that's down and you let this slam well that should be okay you can see it's tweaking this one over but if there's ever anything hanging out like this and you give her a slam it's gonna break these right half into so hinges plastic hinges shitty trying to ginger careful the front panel offer there jeweler's pry bars ineffectually swiping at the ribbon cable connector they've added some silastic or some sort of anti-tamper shmoo in their red glue that's tough to get there Jesus thing out without breaking the board hmm there comes a time and every man's wife you just got to say [ __ ] it let the chips fall where they may there we go I wasn't so bad hey once you get the tip of it in got a jack off the cobs off the potentiometers here in order to get the board off not so much to see why it works we there Howard Berkes we know how it works potentiometers will be on this board it'll feed into the into the controller inside just tell you what sort of so that's an interesting Kanab it does have some we call it grieving a little bit a little bit extreme on accoutrement one thing I do not like here as we see the potentiometer does not have enough affixing it to the board so we're relying on the PCB to prevent the yeah so if you whack one of these by mistake you're actually whacking the PCB directly there's no yeah there's no nut to help that along and this is well that's a stiff piece of metal so they should have really really should have a nut on there because if you give it a whack it's gonna swing that crack the board potentially there's the board this in all her grand you're not teabag nothing disgusting no jank eNOS no Chinese iam to speak of and we got nice conformal coating on here perfect a little bit odd where the rotary switches are directly knotted right into the PCB it's not you know she's got some flexion to it so when you're when you're refit on these switches in a mad panic or rage depending you got to consider that you're right on the board so just be a little bit ginger with that and of course if you have one of these greebles nuts on here that is a little bit loose or slightly proud of this board you know during the assembly if it's slightly proud of this if you give her a whack you're actually pushing directly on to the potentiometer and these are not all that great at axial thrust they're not all that great at radial thrust either but so here's the brain boxer II as the clock they're a couple of MOSFETs a couple of indicator LEDs and comparators probably operational amplifiers look at this though built on board to this brain box is a USB USB and also on the back side of her a tactile switch not accessible by the operator so what is that form uh gotta be for programming hmm might be ripe for the well that's a there's no there's no unlocked feature so this has all the features you'd you know there's nothing it's not like a TIG that you need more frequency or yeah so I don't know if you could do yeah you could have a look see what's on there but if you don't have the drivers for this thing or you don't have the programmer for that brand of chip it might not do anything TMC tm4c one two three G so you can do the best rebo's look at this cork stuffer the amount of ejection pins on this injection molded part just the ABS plastique and it's a valence nothing more to it maybe a handle but there's also a handle in the middle of her so quite wasteful for fashion I guess there is you know the Kardashian said is getting into welding but I would suggest you wasted this is a waste you get rid of this and you put that money into putting an extra wrap of electrical tape on the on the gun end huh makes a sense to me now let's okay so we got a little grounding strip and the grounding strips are real positively a fix on is nice you're not gonna weeble wobble off ah there we go that's a nice nice piece of tin there and then powder electro it's painted but it must be electro painted and then some nice louvers on here just to aid in dust ingress I guess and unless it's this uh yeah this might be a suck fan and then it blows out here probably blows out here there's got to be a filter I would assume a couple three dozen m6 screws panel screws and we are in likes in overall impression tea bag we got some good wire management here don't get the 1976 hustler Bush style going on all kinds of zaps traps and also some some clips we've got two two little 12-volt or 24 volt solenoids and they control the gas from the front and from the back how you set which one goes or if I'm not sure you're gonna have to look in the manual for that one thing that's disconcerting absolutely no air filtration through here so you see all these components and then they are conformally coated so that means that there's a layer of probably urethane plastic on top of that just kind of goop Don they're painted on but no mitigation for dust of course when you're welding grinding gonna get a lot of dust so I am going to add now that's an interesting thing that there's no filtration are they worried about the filter getting plugged and then the thing overheating all the time the guy getting pissed off or is that a case where they want the dust in there so it blows up quick quicker you know because that's kind of a a cribbed and not a crib death effect that's that lowers the lifetime of the machine you get a whole big layer a dust on there there's less cooling and there's conductive dust is toxic absolutely tastic to electronical so I'm gonna put a little filter on there not to reduce the air flow just to pick up some of the some of the particles it's not gonna pick everything up just some of the particles you know one big fan here this is just a like a CPU ATX power supply fan type deal and then another fan here of course this must be what's doing the switching here and here this must be the input rectification got a bunch of capacitors big nasty bastards they're 450 volts so we're taking 220 we're rectifying it that jump set up quite a bit so we'll be looking at 400 volts on the DC bus more than likely if not more than that a bunch of chokes all sorts of stuff going on here we'll get in and have a closer look they're really gunning hard for the kind of hobby prosumer upper end of things they're at the hazard fraud this is nice there's an actual schematic in the manual you don't get that very often anymore so that might you might even be able to buy parts for this you never know I don't know if there's a secondary parts market for the hazard fraud stuff but maybe you send it in and get it fixed or maybe they just give you a new one a couple little well power comes in of course there's a big beefy relay here 40 amp no name kind of chinese IAM but no big deal i have gleaned through the components it's a mixed match of what ever you know whatever fit the bill there's a Toshiba here I saw an on semi down there these IGBTs I highly doubt they're Infineon but they're probably well that guy down there is that's a on semiconductor so there are some good parts in here and then other just sort of non name-brand parts so of course it gets rectified rectum fried through here on to the DC bus these big capacitors store that charge one thing we don't like to see is Z so all kinds of silastic that's great but the silastic attaching right on the the wrap on the capacitors a lot of times they'll put an additional wrap on here because that wrap breaks off and of course that needs to be insulated lots of silastic very nice lots of mitigation for vibration it's positively affixed with actual screws actual Hardware all of the connectors has some sort of anti-tamper shmoo on there and it's tough to get off so yeah it's not gonna just fall off on you couple little things are kind of janky a little bit questionable we have resistors here these resistors or resistors are little tiny here's of course so you have a component on a heatsink with a heater on it so you're trying to sink the heat out of this component and then you put a five watt heater beside it same thing here it's a five watt heater sandwiched between two devices what need to stay cool we have lots and lots of heat sinking no dearth of aluminium in here none at all another little janky thing is we have a current transformer around and output but it's zap strapped on and it's relying on it's not a fix to anything it's just kind of rubbing up against the motor a motor DC 24 volt motor slow speed 170 rpm so that's or a drive mechanism and we can already see here the static electricity is making the dust build up on that casement and on the input side lots and lots of filtering all these filter caps in here and put choke and some PCT so positive temperature coefficient they're essentially resistors as the current goes up the resistance goes up they they limit the amount of current going in some metal oxide varistors for voltage spikes all lots and lots of mitigation for for noise and we even see here that the control board is on the front panel and then we have this we have this ribbon cable going through all this high power electronical x' and we got this kind of doohickey on there what is that well that is ferrite that is an inductor in order to reduce the high-speed signaling a high speed noise now disappointingly you lift up the skirts on some would be cheese gray Janey's IAM and your finger you'd get some invasive species but well sadly she's nothing too horrific in there to speak up a couple little things janky ness of course this a gun the guns a little janky so when when it craps out you get yourself a new gun also it's quite short you know she might not be but three inches smells more like a foot that [ __ ] don't fly the hello I said joke booked a blind eye went out with a blind girl last night should give me a [ __ ] said this was the biggest one she put her hands on I told her she was pulling my leg what else oh yeah the this there's a little bit of janky this here a little so there's a there's a washer there because this was too big of a hole although having a look at this love iton saw it an actual named Brown twistlock in there and it's got a reset circuit breaker I mean nothing - horrific I'm gonna go ahead and try and get this back together in a future of a jail well do the spray transfer as well as the short-circuit welding we'll try out some different materials I got a spool gun will come from Amazon we'll check that out you know looking at this all the components in here there there's not much margin on on this this might even be a loss leader what for reducing the inherent stink lines associated with hazard fraud they might be trying to move a little bit more upmarket and with this offering it's definitely not what I was expecting and like I say she's a sore dick deal partner Wow as to whether or not the quality will stay up in six eight ten years you know that that's the thing that might come up with a super Skookum one and then I start start pairing her back a little bit to tweak up their profit margins or this could be a loss leader just to get you in the door you start buying welders from there then all of a sudden you're buying your consumables from there all of a sudden you're buying your PPE from there all of a sudden the wholesalers out of business and hazard frog got you by the short and curlies here's the thing the old gray mare my old purple thermodyne box what I've been using for a nem electric discharge machining not electronic dance music the other medium power supply she ain't what she used to be it doesn't well near as smooth as it used to and it's got the DC tick so I think having a look at this I'm even gonna bite the bullet and get the omelet Pro 220 I think it is will do AC TIG welding as well we'll be able to do a loo mininum TIG welding in addition to running this off the spool what does this be welding fools till next time thanks for watching keep your dick in a vise

Channel: AvE

Views: 897,661

Keywords: welder, vulcan, miller, lincoln, mig, test, review, teardown, experiment, fix, repair, fabrication, metal, arc, harbor freight

Id: Gh51jPKeR9A

Length: 28min 0sec (1680 seconds)

Published: Thu May 17 2018