Lincoln Procut board woe

[camdigger]

A neighbor bought a Lincoln procut unit rated for 3/4 cutting for a project involving several hundred feet of cutting 10 ga steel. His thinking was buy heavier machine to get more room on duty cycle. In less than halfway through, he blew the mother board. I'm not sure how it could be off warranty already (less tha 6 months), but no joy there. Apparently, a new board is 2/3 the price of a new unit not including labor

He needs a source of less expensive boards. Otherwise, he'll have to scrap a machine less than 6 months old and buy a different color machine. He's looking seriously at a Hypertherm 45 like the one he borrowed from another neighbor to tide him over. (Not sure why he didn't buy Hyperterm to start with like I suggested, but water, bridge, spilled milk, etc yadda yadda)

[macona]

Call up lincoln, they may help you out. They have done it in the past for customers of mine.

[camdigger]

the LWS representing Lincoln gave him the outrageous price...

To add insult to injury, Lincoln Canada seems to hide their plasma products.

[macona]

Call Lincoln direct. Bypass the LWS. I can pretty much guarantee they never talked to lincoln themselves. Why loose the profit of a new board if you dont have to?

If that fails contact Innovat Corp. They do repairs on all sorts of welder, plasma, and other industrial electronics. Probably be a couple hundred. They have fixtures for a lot of machines and can test them. I have used them in the past on an Esab plasma board I just couldnt figure out. I think they reverse engineer the boards to make their own schematics.

http://www.innovatcorp.com/

[rancherbill]

the LWS representing Lincoln gave him the outrageous price...

To add insult to injury, Lincoln Canada seems to hide their plasma products.

I can't see it on the US site either.

[AussieChris]

Less than 6 months eh? And the red and blue guys like to make fun of the Chinese machines!

Anyway, don't you guys have statutory warranties? Over here, even if the manufacturer wants to impose a 3 or 6 month warranty, it still has to abide by the government imposed statutory warranty which is 12 months or more. For example, if a big screen TV fails at 18 months but has a 12 month manufacturer warranty it doesn't matter, they still gotta pony up because the statutory warranty says a TV should last longer than a couple of years. If Lincoln won't cover the repairs I'd be contacting Fair Trading or Better Business Bureau or who ever you have.

Even the Chinese made Everlast (www.everlastwelders.ca) welders and cutters have a 5 year warranty, and half the price.

Otherwise the Thermal Dynamics is a nice machine.

Chris
Brisbane Australia.

[macona]

Is the machine only 6 months old??? I thought it was 6 months past its warranty.

Any machine can fail. I dont think you would want to compare actual fail rates or DOAs of a chinese machine vs Red or Blue.

But it is strange. i wonder if Lincoln is getting out of the plasma business. Dont blame them, their plasmas were a joke.

Lincoln standard warranty is 3 years.

[rancherbill]

Even the Chinese made Everlast (www.everlastwelders.ca) welders and cutters have a 5 year warranty, and half the price.

It is a 'shoddy' product. It has NO Electrical approvals for North America - CSA, uCSAl, UL, or ULc. They ship it without a plug on the end.

To be legal, you are supposed get a permit to hardwire it, OR if you put your own plug on, do it at your own risk.

[mark61]

http://www.lincolnelectric.com/knowl...us/default.asp