Ground lead connection

[Lennyzx11]

I had to make a couple of wall brackets for a mini split installation yesterday.
Drug out the Hobart MVP210 and Hypertherm PowerMax 30 and Speedglas helmet. All on a cheap harbor freight cart. Going to be a quick job so out on edge of concrete floor of garage by the door.
It had been a month since I’d did anything with them.
Got set up. Used the portable bandsaw to cut some rough stock and welded some simple angles to each end out of scrap.
Checked the rough pieces against the mini split to see where to precisely trim and plasma cut the brackets.
Got my measurements and set up to cut the first piece.
Plasma cutter hooked up, ground clamp on and away we go. Not....
The pilot arc comes from on but machine won’t light off.
Grab cordless grinder and clean better spot for ground.
Nope. Check temp extension cord for voltage and drop and all is well.
Hmmm.
Swap power connections again and test welder. Works perfect.

Aww man. What could be wrong with this Hypertherm?

Then I found the problem.
The Hypertherm Power Max Air30 will NOT work properly if you use the ground clamp attached to the workpiece if said ground clamp is connected to the Hobart Handler mig welder located above it on the cart.

No matter how clean you get the surface for the clamp!

 

[Yomax4]

I had to make a couple of wall brackets for a mini split installation yesterday.
Drug out the Hobart MVP210 and Hypertherm PowerMax 30 and Speedglas helmet. All on a cheap harbor freight cart. Going to be a quick job so out on edge of concrete floor of garage by the door.
It had been a month since I’d did anything with them.
Got set up. Used the portable bandsaw to cut some rough stock and welded some simple angles to each end out of scrap.
Checked the rough pieces against the mini split to see where to precisely trim and plasma cut the brackets.
Got my measurements and set up to cut the first piece.
Plasma cutter hooked up, ground clamp on and away we go. Not....
The pilot arc comes from on but machine won’t light off.
Grab cordless grinder and clean better spot for ground.
Nope. Check temp extension cord for voltage and drop and all is well.
Hmmm.
Swap power connections again and test welder. Works perfect.

Aww man. What could be wrong with this Hypertherm?

Then I found the problem.
The Hypertherm Power Max Air30 will NOT work properly if you use the ground clamp attached to the workpiece if said ground clamp is connected to the Hobart Handler mig welder located above it on the cart.

No matter how clean you get the surface for the clamp!

Very common problem for sure. lol..

 

[Gary Fowler]

I did the same thing a few days ago, hooked the wrong ground on a piece I was trying to cut with the plasma.
Two more bone headed things: First bone head: Tuesday, I dropped a piece of steel on my new 10 foot whip section of my oxy-acetylene rig. I put on some old hose and didnt know it had leaks since I was using it a few years ago with no problem.
Second : I left my oxy-acetylene bottles on after putting on an old hose to replace the one I dropped a piece of steel on. I guess it had a big leak because it drained both my almost full bottles. I have to go spend some bucks to get another acetylene bottle and trade in my oxygen on a 75/25 Argon mix. I was planning to swap the O2 bottle but not this quick. I guess I was lucky it didnt blow up my shop.

 

[California]

There's a name for when that happens: "the perversity of inanimate objects'.

An example this week. the DSL router from ATT doesn't broadcast wifi very far so I have a better router in the back window which reaches the shop and the guest cabin at 100% strength. It receives signal from the main router via Ethernet-over-powerline. Signal from this window router went intermittent, and then down, while I was running diagnostics on that router's internal config and then looking in the primary router's config. Finally on a hunch I swapped in a different EOP receiver to feed the window router, and replaced the short Ethernet cable between the EOP receiver and the window router.

It successed! (Technical term from an old soundcard's setup instructions. ) That short ethernet cable at the foot of a daybed had been kicked too many times

100% wifi everywhere resumed. The problem wasn't in the routers setups that I had wasted a half hour diagnosing. It was only a bad cable, hardware not software.

 

[Gary Fowler]

Old mechanics saying, check the simply things first is probably good advice for all of us.
My plasma wouldnt light off with the pilot arc but would cut if I got close enough to the metal. Thinking that the HF was going bad at first then maybe I better check the tip and electrode. Sure enough there was a big arc burn right in the middle of the electrode. A little sanding on the end to remove the arc burn and it worked like new.