Boosting a mig welder with a stick welder.

I have a multiweld 180, a veritable mig welder, doesnt quite have enough balls to do thick stuff though.
Having a little electrical knowledge and being a total tight git and not wanting to shell out hundreds on a heavy duty mig I thought I'd try a bodge to up the output on the 180, it worked.
I connected the earth on the stick welder to the live on the torch at the back of the mig set torch socket, then connected the stinger to a 150 amp rectifier diode I got off eblag (see pics), the other end of which goes to the workpiece, I bodged this in the vice, a jump lead would be better.
On the side of the diode there is the electrical symbol for it, the arrow points away from the workpiece.
The set now blasts away on 8mm no problem, before I struggled to do 6mm.
Heres some piccies, dont try this at home unless your either mad or have some lectrical know how, the last pic is some welds, the crap ones are before and the 3 better ones with loads of pen are after:

dont really see what your trying to acheive.... the 160 amp arc welder with 3.25 rods should weld 8mm steel plate without mods. all your pics show is that your setup will lay a bead on top of a piece of plate, have you actually joined anything together yet?

Ah, but now he has a MIG welder that will do 8mm plate. Very cunning, bodging at its best.

My 150 mig with .6mm wire will blow through 4mm plate with relitive ease so if your 180 wont penetrate 8mm plate ide say theres something wrong with it, what size wire are you using.

my old 130 will zap through 8mm on max - yep deffo something wrong there

150 amp stick seriesed to 180 amp mig and your chucking more than 180 amps thru the workpiece?
your welders coils will be rated to thier max output, so pulling more amps could result in 2 burnt out welders.......
also i think the mig will be full wave rectified direct current, and the stick would be pure alternating current, half wave rectified with your diode.
sure not sure what the consequences of seriesed full wave an half wave would be.
then theres the problem of setting the output voltages the same for both sets so one aint working harder that the other.

as oldskool sez, think you may have an initial problem with the mig. bad contact, or a diode gone down. (but you stand a good chance of finding it.......)

perhaps use it as a detonator for some fizzy rocks.....

I'd take some mig welder current ratings with a very large pinch of salt. Like the man says, you need to be mad or know what you're doing here. I just hope he's got a fire extinguisher handy, just in case.......

The welders are not in series that wouldnt work, they are in parallel, the stick is half wave yes, the smoothing caps in the mig smooth it out a little.
I dont think anythink is overrated, the smoothing caps will be working a little harder.

And the idea worked, I disnt have to borrow another set I did the job.

And yes there are significant variations in ratings, I thought my 180 was responisbly rated, maybe not, spose its similar to car stereo wattage ratings, some are 20 times actual.

dr pepper said:

The welders are not in series that wouldnt work, they are in parallel, .

Click to expand...

oops, musta missed that bit!
an thinkin bout it now, dont know why i missed it......

assumed it were a permenant set up, so yeah, sometimes you just gotta experiment when you need to get summat done.
glad it worked for you!