I busted out my Miller syncrowave 180 last night for the first time in about 2 months. Last work I did on it it was starting to act funny. With the inital push of the pedal to start the arc it would have crazy lightning arcs dancing all over the place then POOF about 5 seconds later it would strike the arc and work fine. Also the arcs arnt coming from the tungsten they are coming from inside the cup, and off the cup to the base material. no matter how hard you hit the pedal, if it doesnt strike the arc right away, it does this. when it does this shit, it sounds like shorting out wires or, nothing like a tig arc shoudl sound and itsnt that intense of an arc.
I checked the spark gap on the machine and it was .012 right in spec. the faces of the barrel shaped “sparkers” had little dimples, like a deteonating spark plug almost…
What i noticed as I tried to strike the arc with the cover off, when it messes up like this and doesnt strike the arc, the spark between the thing in the machine are going nuts, just like the torch… jumping all over the place. If the torch decides to arc correctly after it jumps around for a sec or two, the spark between the gaps in the machine are either non existant or faint to where I cant see them.
Cables are tight, ground is good on the work, metal is clean, tungsten is clean, and its actually a brand new torch with new collets and everything.
do you have any idea what it could be? The only thing I can think is to get 4 new spark contacts for inside the machine and replace them, other than that it might have to go to the man in blue to take a look at it.
