Defective Lincoln AC Exciter Frame L6061-X/ L6795-1
I have been working in this industry since 1971, and I have a love/hate relationship with
Lincoln Electric. I admire their engineering, particularly the design of the older DC machines. These machines were created in a time when calculations were made by hand, without the aid of computers, and I’m sure a lot of guesswork was involved in the process. They worked!
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The basic technology of a standalone alternator, producing constant-current AC
voltage, rectifiers, and is fed into a shunt coil to produce current using an engine-powered dynamo. The arc voltage has two "controls": 1) the "fine current control" (misnamed, but it still works!) and the arc length of the welding rod to the metal, controlled by the welder.
The failures in these are always windings losing resistance or opening up. The schematic below shows the exciter windings. There are larger red and black wires, with a white wire known as a center tap. These stator windings produce the AC auxiliary 240/120 volts. These winding resistances are critical. In our experience the value change of +/- 10% is critical. Between red and black 1 ohm +/- 0.1 ohms. You need to cut these wires, leaving enough length to splice them easily. Strip them back enough to check the resistance. This is where a good VOM meter is necessary. These coils have very low resistance. Clip the leads to the wires, and let them sit for a minute. The DC coming from the meter takes time to saturate the windings, and when the temperature is 70' F or higher.
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The winding technology to manufacture these exciter frames has remained the same for over 100 years. We believe we have identified the reasons these assemblies fail. We cannot improve the basic design, but we have taken steps to mitigate their weakness.
Why You Should Invest Your Hard-Earned Money in a Weldmart Rewound Exciter Frame?
1. It;s expensive. You only want to do it once!
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2. They are obsolete from Lincoln, but only carried a 1-year warranty if replaced by an authorized, certified, sanitized Lincoln Service Center. The machines are older than the tech!
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3. Weldmart warrants our rewounds for 5 years from the date of purchase by the original customer.
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4. Weldmart warrants our rewounds for the life of the original customer. It fails you. Please bring it back. We want to know why.
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5. We have been selling and installing these frames for over twenty years, no claims!
How to Order a Rewound Frame?
In our opinion, this is too big a purchase to make blindly on the net.
1. Call our office, about 25% of my customers looking for an exciter housing, have other problems, not their exciter.
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2. If we sell you, we need your core (it is not available anymore. and your code number.
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3. We'll send you a rewound exciter frame in a wooden crate. You will be charged a core charge and a box charge. Put your core in the box and send it back to us. We will refund your core and box charge.
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4. Call us, we want to talk to you. Don't forget your code number. ​​​​​​
