That welder brings back a lot of memories for me. We called that model of welder a variety of nicknames: "Lincoln Upright"; "Vacuum Cleaner" (after the upright vacuums of the 20's which had the motor sitting on top of the blower housing, such as the vintage Hoovers); or, "Coffee Grinder".
In 1972, when I first got out of engineering school, I went to work on powerplant construction project sites. Back in those days, we were running a lot of carbon steel pipe, outdoors, all stick welded. Some of the pipe was run up on supports above ground, some was run underground. We did nearly all the welding with Lincoln motor generator sets. The reason for this was to avoid having to bring an Operating Engineer on site to start and service engine driven machines. Instead, since we had electricians on site, we had a temporary feeder run with standup temporary power panels. We are talking about a few miles of pipe, but someone in the home office sharpened a pencil and said it was less costly to use the MG sets vs engine driven. Here and there, in some really remote areas of the site, we did use the old Lincoln SA 200 welders (these had the Continental Red Seal engines).
We used the Lincoln upright machines like the one in this thread along with what we called the "Lincoln Bombs"- the horizontal MG welders which were usually 300 amp machines- interchangeably. Some of the pipe was 12", and got "chill rings" (backing rings with spacer pins to insure the weld root gap was correct), and was 100 % radiography on the welds. We had no "rejectable indications" or even cause for suspicion of anything on any of the X-Ray films of the welds.
We kept those machines outdoors, and at most, had the concrete form carpenters build a lean-to to keep the rain off them. The pipefitters worked in temporary shelters when bad weather moved in. We worked into winter with those machines outdoors. The trick was never to shut down the AC power to them, and just keep the MG set spinning 24/7. The reason for this was it kept the windings warm, and kept the mice out.
I was fresh out of engineering school, and truth be known, greener than new grass with a whole world of things to learn about the real practice of engineering. I had tried striking an arc here and there, and had been taught to oxyacetylene weld when I was a kid. I had O/A welded, brazed and silver-brazed plenty on jobs as a machinist. Beyond that, and some theory, I knew nothing more of the practical sides of pipefitting, ironwork, field boilermakers' work, and any other kind of welding in general. Since the bulk of my responsibility was to field design and oversee the installation of the piping, I was thrown in with the pipefitters for the most part. The pipefitter general foreman was a kindly man, and his son was just my age- starting as an apprentice on the job. The pipefitter GF took me under his wing, as did his crew. They taught me a great deal and got me started in my profession as much as anyone ever did.
I was fascinated by the whole process of welding, let alone open root pipe joints (on the non-X ray welds), and the simple welds on things like pipe supports which I had field designed from structural steel. The Pipefitters told tall tales of jobs at coffee time, probably for my benefit. It was not long until one of the pipefitters, who was "double lengthing" two "single random lengths" of 12" pipe on roller stands, got an extra shield and said I could look over his shoulder. That was the start of it. In nothing flat, they had found a spare Lincoln MG set, some scrap steel and gotten me a welding jacket and gloves. The pipefitters got me started welding. It was with a Lincoln upright MG set much like the one in this thread. The pipefitters were good teachers, and they soon had me running E 7018 uphill vertical, and running out of position welds. Ironworkers, boilermakers, and millwrights all taught me some of their work, and more of welding along the way. I learned to run the "red flux" Lincoln 5P, or E 6010. While it does not give so pretty a bead as E 7018, it is great for root passes on open root welds, for poor fitups and welding on rusty scrap or repair jobs. I learned to "keyhole" with the E 6010, and to run it in all positions. All we had were the Lincoln MG welders. If the rod seemed to be running a little hot, rather than stop and go tweak the fine adjustment on the machine, I was taught to adjust my arc size, angle and travel speed.
I have to laugh about it all these years later. As Certified Welding Inspector, I've tested and qualified many welders and kept their qualifications current by checking their welding "in process" on jobs. The younger welders would never have made it back when I started. They are used to the modern inverter machines with digital displays and all sorts of internal automatic controls. If a weld is not running quite right for them, they are up and back to the machine tweaking by a matter of 2 or 3 amps. The insist on having a fancier auto darkening shield than the next guy, being more concerned with the graphics on the shield than whether the shield is a good fit and has a good auto darkening filter. When these younger people would start in blaming the machine or their shield for their own problems with running a weld for me, I'd take my own shield and take the stinger and run some to show them. Then, I'd tell them about how things were when I came into the industry. I'd tell them about pipefitters and ironworkers or boilermakers in places where they were on their backs welding overhead in a tight spot, and no one handy to run and tweak the adjustments on their machines, so they ran with what the machine was putting out- and the welds passed X Ray.
Sorry to ramble on. I can hear the sound of those old Lincoln MG sets in my mind as I write this. I had a funny episode years ago with a 300 amp Hobart MG welder. Same principal as the Lincoln upright. I was engineer and construction super on a hydroelectric construction site on the NY City Watersheds at Kensico Reservoir down in Westchester County. The millwrights were busy on my jobsite, when a mechanic from NYC Watersheds came in. He explained they had torn a bucket on a tractor loader and wondered if someone was available on my site to do a welded repair. I explained the millwrights were all working on erecting hydroelectric units, and we only had one welder on the job. The mechanic said they had a welding machine and oxyacetylene torch, and asked if anyone could come to their building to do the repair. I said I could shake loose from my work and would help them out.
I went over to the NYC Watershed's building, and they had their 300 amp Hobart welder. We got a rosebud (heating tip) on their torch, a couple of heavy sledge hammers (aka "beaters"), a large monkey wrench (for hot bending the crumpled steel of the bucket), and some electrode. We hot straightened the damaged steel of the bucket and ground out the torn weld seam. I fired up the Hobart welder to start welding as we straightened and refitted the seam on the bucket. The welder went nuts, moaning and squealing like an old vacuum tube radio and not holding any kind of arc. I checked polarity, and was OK there. I checked my electrode (E 7018), so was OK there was well. Good ground (American Welding Society now insists it be called "work clamp" since welding can be either DC electrode positive or DC electrode negative, so that clamp is not always a true "ground".). One of the watershed mechanics said electricians had been working on the power panels in that building, and funny thing was some pumps were not delivering and other motors were all turning in the wrong direction. OK, now we knew the problem. I had them isolate the power panel at a service breaker, and we then took the front off that panel and swapped two of the phases feeding that panel. Restarted the welder and it sounded normal and happy again. Struck and arc and welded with no problem. It was the only time I had ever encountered a motor generator welder that was running in the wrong direction. It did not seem to harm the welder any, but it did not reverse its polarity or do anything other than cause it not to be able to start and maintain an arc.
The Lincoln Upright welder in this thread has 3 phase input current, so be careful about checking rotation when you first wire it up. Take the "hat" off the top of the generator and verify rotation by "bumping" the on/off switch.
The Lincoln upright was a good little machine. As I like to say: it has "plenty of copper". It can survive a kid learning to weld and sticking the electrode to the work and fighting to get it unstuck (we used to call that a "magnetic welding rod" as it stuck fast to the work). As I developed my welding skills, I came to realize that the old MG sets were forgiving machines, simple, and with reasonable maintenance, would never fail to give a good stable arc. On other jobs, we used those same machines with TIG torches for what is known as "scratch start TIG"- and this was on nuclear powerplant work. It was my introduction to GTAW or TIG welding. No footpedal/high frequency start, just scratch the tungsten and go. I saw miles of very fine stainless pipe welds run by pipefitters using the Lincoln MG machines and scratch start TIG. No bells, whistles, or footpedal control.
Last year, I saw an old Lincoln machine for sale locally. We needed a portable engine driven welder on our railroad, and I was getting tired of loading/unloading my own Lincoln engine driven machine from my pickup, let alone putting the hours on it. The machine is a Lincoln 225 amp engine driven "Lincwelder". It has an Onan 16 HP gasoline engine driving the same generator end as the upright machine. I jumped on that machine and bought it for the railroad. I gave 400 bucks for the machine, and another 300 bucks for 200 feet of 00 and 0 sized welding lead with Tweco connectors. The Lincoln welder had not run in years, and had come out of a stone quarry/crusher plant. No batteries in it at the time I bought it, no gasoline in the tank, dead of winter. I turned the machine over by hand to be sure the engine was not seized, checked the oil and bought the machine.
With fresh batteries (had to modify the battery boxes as the original "Corvair" style batteries are extremely expensive), fresh gasoline, and little else, the old welder fired up. I ran the serial number on a Lincoln website, and the machine is built in 1967. It burned rod and maintained a stable arc with no problem. I did have to take apart and clean the automatic idler as it was sticking, and did have to tinker with the carburetor as it probably has a load of crud in it. I've burned well over 50 lbs of rod with that old Lincoln this past summer, repairing the frame on a railroad flat car and adding handrail posts for passenger service. I've used it on a number of other jobs as well. The engine is clearly tired, so when I strike the arc, I have to "play the arc" a little for maybe an eye blink of time to allow the engine to catch up. Come the cold weather, I will rebuild the Onan engine.
I jumped on that Lincoln welder as it has nothing too much in it to go bad. No electronics beyond diodes for the battery charging circuit. No bells and whistles, just a basic machine. Same as the upright Lincoln in this thread, if you want to change polarity for welding, swap lead connections. The Lincoln upright is a small and handy machine. It is small enough that it was not the kind of machine that could be overworked or abused. The bigger Lincoln engine driven or MG welders were often used for running carbon arc gouging. This is probably the roughest service a welding power supply can see. For many years, long after rectifier type welding power supplies and even into the era of the inverter type welding power supplies, people kept the old MG units just for arc gouging.
The upright, being only 225 amps, is too light for arc gouging, so was generally a shop machine and used on finer work. As I said, I've seen these machines running TIG torches with no problem- as long as you are welding stainless or carbon steel and can live with scratch start DC TIG. I think you will be quite happy with the Lincoln upright. I am old school, and a great believer in basic stick welding as the most universal and most forgiving welding process. We still use it like no tomorrow for pipe welding and pressure vessel work as well as field boiler repairs and lots more. I've seen crafts burn 50 lbs of electrode in an 8 hour work day with those upright machines, day in and day out, and those machines stood up to that kind of heavy service. It's a fine old machine, for sure, and I am glad to see someone will put one to good use instead of out to pasture.
