Serious Issue With An Electronic Welder Repaired
Part of my repair business, I go and talk to welders at their shops about my repair business especially the welding machine repair. I got a lot of attention and a lot of business. As I was talking to one of the welding guys nearby my shop he mentioned a welding machine that he had for almost a year and it stopped working.
The customer powered up the machine and the moment he did that I heard a loud pop inside the machine and it tripped the safety switch on the power panel of the workshop (not the earth leakage switch).
After discharging the main power capacitors I headed directly to the IGBT’s and I was expecting a lot of damage there.
From looking at the outside look on these parts, nothing was revealed but when I took them off board for testing, it was completely different, take a look
The part number is GW60V60DF. Some of the pins of the IGBT were still soldered on board; it was a disaster.
Click on the above photo to access the datasheet
One of them was in good condition and the rest were shorted out. For better service, you should always replace all of them. The part number mentioned above was not available in my shop so I contact the customer and he was willing to wait for a month till a get the part and get the machine fixed.
In about 18 days I got the parts in the mail and headed directly to work on the machine. Before I installed any of the parts, I had to look around in that area for other faulty parts.
In the marked area, a fuse resistor that was open and I found another one on the other side of the IGBT’s.
Another faulty fuse resistor of the same value that was also open.
Another procedure that I do to make sure that the machine is up and running; I power up the welding machine before installing the IGBT’s and see if everything is ok.
As you can see, the green lights came on and were steady which was a great indication that the machine is ready to receive the new IGBT’s and get fixed.
I added thermal paste to the IGBT’s and installed them back on board and I was ready to test the machine.
As you can see, the power light was on and thank God the red light was not on otherwise, the machine would not work. This is an indication that the machine is receiving power the way it should but the question remains if the machine is giving out power to do the welding? Let us find out.
Mission accomplished.
This article was prepared for you by Waleed Rishmawi, one of our ‘Master Authors’ and currently working in the Bethlehem area of Palestine repairing electrical and electronic equipment.
P.S- Do you know of any your friends who would benefit from this content that you are reading now? If so, forward this website to your friends or you can invite your friends to subscribe to my newsletter for free in this Link.
Note: You can check his previous repair articles in the link below:
https://jestineyong.com/burnt-out-led-strip-in-samsung-ua32eh4003-repaired/
Albert van Bemmelen
August 28, 2019 at 8:02 pm
It is a good thing that you are able to fix all those defect Welders because they obviously are heavily used in the part of the world where you live. I wonder if you have come across any Welding Machines that do not get destroyed that easily which are hardly ever in need of any repair, and what type or Manufacturer model that would be?
Waleed Rishmawi
August 29, 2019 at 2:49 pm
Albert: good question. sad to say no. the welding machine which are made in china are sold here on a large scale because there are cheap comparing with the high quality ones. on the other hand, with cheap welding machine use with a lot of abuse. they do not take care of their machines the way it should be. the welding machine that my brother uses is china made one but higher quality that they used to make in the past but not any more but still have to go through a lot of maintenance work in order to keep it up and running
Parasuraman S
August 30, 2019 at 5:22 pm
Excellent 'welding' article, welding our knowledge to many more spheres! As usual, you excel in these type of repair work and remain unique! Well done!
Waleed Rishmawi
September 1, 2019 at 8:42 am
Parasuraman: thanks man. Have a blessed day