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Free Lincoln Shield Arc welder (motor generator type)

Dave Vincent

Cast Iron
Joined
Nov 4, 2006
Location
Rochester, New York
Hi all,
I have a older Lincoln Shield Arc Welder motor generator welder. Type SAE 200 amps, Serial A40168, Full load 44 amps, and 220 volts 3 phase. The reason that I am giving it away is that some times it will start with my RPC and sometimes it won't. My RPC starts my 250 amp coffee grinder just fine. To make sure that the welder was ok, I took it to work and hooked it up to 208 volt 3 phase there. Its starts fine there and welds well. Along with the welder will be a copy of this manual.Lincoln Shield-Arc Welder Instruction Manual IM-103-A, Industrial Library It looks just like the picture and every thing works on it as it should. The welder will not come with power cord, cables, or the cart. I hate to get rid of this but between is size and not working with my RPC, It has to go. I am located in Rochester, New York. I would like someone to get it and use it, not scrap it. In a pinch I can bolt to a pallet to ship it. If interested please email me at [email protected]
Thanks for looking Dave Vincent
 
Should be a 1939 model. For those with the power and room, in spite of its age (or because of it?), this is one of the finest, smoothest DC welders you will ever use. It can be used for scratch start tig as well. The SAE models have the voltage adjustable separately from the amperage, so it can be tuned to satisfy the most demanding weldor. I'd drive a hundred miles to get it for that price and I already have two of them.

The bad points are its heavy, power hungry, and noisy. Don't even try to scrap it for the copper. If copper were $5/lb, you might earn $.50/hour for your work.
 
Is this the horizontal type,or the vertical......Best DC welders ever made ,or ever will be made.......the horizontals are 1800 rev and run quietly,the verticals are noisy ,in a restrained scream sort of a way.......I have all sorts of old bullets ,up to SAE 800.....that baby would drain the power.Lincoln Welders...the name is enough.
 
Is this the horizontal type,or the vertical......Best DC welders ever made ,or ever will be made.......the horizontals are 1800 rev and run quietly,the verticals are noisy ,in a restrained scream sort of a way.......I have all sorts of old bullets ,up to SAE 800.....that baby would drain the power.Lincoln Welders...the name is enough.

Friend bought an sae-600 driven with a screaming deetroit....1800 rpm or not it ain't
what I would call "quiet" by any means.. .. .. ..
 
SA 800.... that is one BIG welder. 800 amps would be consistent with Lincoln's designation/rating system. 800 amps was the kind of welding power supply used for heavy submerged arc welding operations. Some of those 800 amp units were used to provide power for submerged-arc ("sub arc") welding on jobs like cement kiln sections.

800 amps is none too practical a welding generator for manual (stick) welding, though it might also be used to supply multiple weldors (Lincoln's term for a person doing the welding was "weldor", while "welder" was their term for the actual welding machine or welding power supply).

We kept a couple of the old Lincoln bullets, 300 amp capacity, at the powerplant for many years after inverter welding power supplies took over. We used them for carbon arc gouging on repairs to the hydro turbine runners ("wheels") and other surfaces that got cavitation damage. Once heavy plasma cutters came on the scene and proved out, we got rid of the last of the Lincoln bullets. We called them "bombs" or "torpedoes". I was sorry to see them go.

When I first got out of engineering school in 1972, motor generator welding power supplies were in widespread use. On the powerplant jobsites, we used the Lincoln 300 amp M-G units, and we had a few Hobarts mixed in. We were running underground piping for fuel oil and fire protection over about a mile and a half as well as plenty of above-ground pipe and some structural work. To avoid keeping an operating engineer or oiler on the job to look after engine driven welders, we went with the M-G units and ran a temporary 480 volt feeder. Where we could not use the M-G sets, such as out on an oil barge unloading dock, we used the Lincoln SA 200 units (Continental Red Seal Engines).

I had never taken formal training in welding, and picked it up on those powerplant jobs. The pipeftitters, boilermakers, and ironworkers taught me the practical side of welding in odd moments. As a young engineer starting his career, I had lots to learn. Engineering school was only a ticket to the game, got me in the gate, but the actual practical side of engineering is another matter. I was a green kid, but respectful and curious. The result was the various crafts taught me some of their work. I learned basic welding skills with oxyacetylene as a boy in a local garage. Bulding off that, the crafts told me to grab a shield and look over their shoulders. Soon enough, I was fixed up with a place to try welding on scrap steel. The general consensus was that I had to master vertical uphill with E 7018, and I did. I learned to "keyhole" root passes using E 6010- which the old timers called "bacon grease" due to the nice sizzle of a proper arc. All of it was learned using the Lincoln M-G welders. Those M-G welders could spoil a weldor as they were about as forgiving and simple a unit as there was. My introduction to TIG (GTAW) was with those M-G welders using "scratch start" TIG. A lug for the TIG torch was simply clipped in the electrode holder, and insulated with a cut-off plastic bottle as a sleeve over the exposed bare bronze lug, or anything else which was handy.

I saw the crafts do some very fine and consistent welding with those old M-G sets, and it is what I learned on as well. I have seen the evolutions in welding equipment, and marvel at the inverter power supplies you can carry with one hand and get 220 amps out of. On the other hand, as a Certified Welding Inspector, I often would be testing weldors to qualify them under various procedures. Some were old hands or naturals at it, and breezed through. Others were real prima donnas. They'd be fiddling with the controls on the inverter power supply, digital display, claiming they needed to go up or down an amp or two or three. I'd get a little testy after awhile and tell them that hundreds of thousands of miles of weld was put in using the old M-G units, often without "remote" control boxes, so the weldor had to change travel speed or angle a bit to compensate for lack of localized fine adjustment. If a person taking a test was still carrying on about needing fine adjustment, or blaming their shield (gotta have a new auto-darkening shield with wild graphics on it to weld properly- yeah, right ?!), I'd grab my own shield and gloves and proceed to run some weld to show them otherwise. I'd explain how it was when I started out, if you were some distance from the welder, you either stopped what you were doing and climbed down (or out of a trench) back to the machine to tweak adjustments... or, you had tried it first on scrap, and if things were not quite right, you never let it get too far. You subconsciously adjusted travel speed, electrode angles, or changed your technique slightly to maintain the weld size and get proper tie in and penetration without undercut or blowing thru. I remember the sound of those old M-G sets. The Lincoln upright machines- which we called either "coffee grinders" or "Vacuum cleaners" (after the upright vacuums of the 30's - 50's) positively howled. No other way to put it. The horizontal units were a bit quieter, but still had their own sound.

While I own a couple of inverter welding power supplies (Thermal Dynamics 130 amp, and Miller Multimatic 220), and have welded with Miller Dynasty inverter units on jobs, I still find myself marvelling and questioning the inverter units. Seems improbable that a little inverter unit could equal an M-G set. For stick welding, the lighter inverter units, despite the amperage they can produce, are not able to run as nice a weld as the old M-G's. The Miller Dynasty units are up to the job, but some of the inverters cannot run the E 6010 at all. For field welding and for piping and pressure vessel/boiler repair work, we still use mainly stick welding. If I do stick welding in my own shop, or in the field, I use one of my Lincoln engine driven welders. There is no substitute for the heavy copper windings in an old M-G or engine driven welder when it comes to running stick welding. I've been on jobs where the welding was 100% radiographed ("X-rayed"), all stick welding, some of it all run with the old red-flux E 6010 (Aka: Fleetweld 5 P). It was an extremely rare occurance that the radiography ever showed any "indication" (possible defect), let alone one that had to be repaired. Good weldors, basic equipment, shields without auto-darkening filters (and no wild graphics on them), and they built a lot of our country and helped defend it with their work. Gotta love those old Lincoln M-G welders and the old Lincoln SA 200's. For old times sake, I showed my wife a Lincoln SA 200 at the local welding supply. It was an old machine with magneto ignition and had the crank to start it. I told my wife that as rusted and weathered as that old SA 200 was, I'd bet that it could do a good day's work and lay down plenty of sound weld. I told my wife how I used to crank start the SA 200's overseas, and kidded that I was going to ask the folks in the welding supply if I could crank that one for old time's sake. Wife said she believed me on all counts. Wife has been around me for over 38 years, so she tends to look at welds on things like handrails or structural work in airline terminals and will kid me about it. Every so often, she will remark" "That's a bird shit weld... who let that welder get away with that...?" Gotta love her !
 
Is this the horizontal type,or the vertical......Best DC welders ever made ,or ever will be made.......the horizontals are 1800 rev and run quietly,the verticals are noisy ,in a restrained scream sort of a way.......I have all sorts of old bullets ,up to SAE 800.....that baby would drain the power.Lincoln Welders...the name is enough.

I've never thought of the horizontals as quiet. I had a same vintage SAE400 I gave to a friend. The fan between the motor and generator probably pulled 3-5 horse by itself, and swept about a 15' circle of floor around the welder it moved so much air. So that was a lower frequency loud noise. Then there were the brushes on the commutator bars. 3 sets of 4 brushes, each about 1" wide. Those had a high frequency whine.

And on the engine drive I can hear the brushes over the scream of a 2-71.
 
I've never thought of the horizontals as quiet. I had a same vintage SAE400 I gave to a friend. The fan between the motor and generator probably pulled 3-5 horse by itself, and swept about a 15' circle of floor around the welder it moved so much air. So that was a lower frequency loud noise. Then there were the brushes on the commutator bars. 3 sets of 4 brushes, each about 1" wide. Those had a high frequency whine.

And on the engine drive I can hear the brushes over the scream of a 2-71.

Amen to that, except swap the Detroit for a knackered 6.354 Perkins, without a silencer (muffler) :eek:

Beautiful welder though :)
 
Some general information The welder is a horizontal at 1800 rpm. Noise wise, it and my coffee grinder sound about the same (there are both noisy).
My RPC is a 10HP American Rotary fed by 65 amp breaker. It starts the 7.5 HP motor on my Hy-Draulic shaper and the 7.5 motor on the coffee grinder with out any trouble. Any questions feel free to ask. Dave
 
they do have a massive inrush, which prevents them from being used with most RPCs
start up and idle both your lathe and shaper, might give you enough inertia to start the welder.
My SAE250 will start on a homemade 10hp idler phase converter only if I also start up the 7.5hp belt sander.

Too bad your so far away. If I were giving it away I'd make sure whoever gets it knows how to weld and won't just scrap it, that would be a shame.

scrapped out an inop one years back and even when copper was high, it was not worth it. Full day's hard work breaking it down.

Few months later got to looking at the bits and found the brush leads were folded over and hung up on the brush holder. Kick myself over that still.
Fun fact, there is no connection whatsoever from mains to the welding generator side, so if you wanted to you could pull out the electric motor section and use the motor's rotor as a flat belt pulley to drive one off a PTO or something.
 
they do have a massive inrush, which prevents them from being used with most RPCs
start up and idle both your lathe and shaper, might give you enough inertia to start the welder.
My SAE250 will start on a homemade 10hp idler phase converter only if I also start up the 7.5hp belt sander.



scrapped out an inop one years back and even when copper was high, it was not worth it. Full day's hard work breaking it down.

Few months later got to looking at the bits and found the brush leads were folded over and hung up on the brush holder. Kick myself over that still.
Fun fact, there is no connection whatsoever from mains to the welding generator side, so if you wanted to you could pull out the electric motor section and use the motor's rotor as a flat belt pulley to drive one off a PTO or something.

Amish do this.

As far as scrapping a motor, burn the motor first.
This get's rid of the varnish holding the wires in the slots.
Chisel to push fiberglass slot out the end.
 
Do these burnout ovens have filters on the exhaust?

What sort of arrangements do they have to sell the copper?

Just curious

They used to just have a hi temp exhaust blower, now in my state, they have afterburner/incinerators.

As far as the copper, I think the "no burn" is waived as they are a regular customer.

Toothless inbred hicks showing up at the scale with 14 gage house wire are denied (using the no burn rule)
to help stamp out meth thefts. And the pollution from open burning of pvc wire insulation.
 








 
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