tcmtech is cleaning out the shop!

[tcmtech]

Since summer is almost here its time to do some sorting and organizing around here.

I Have at least 15 assorted trace, Heart Freedom and other inverter units I have collected over the years and I am getting rid of them and some other stuff too! They range from 500 to 2500 watts. Some are 'just quit and dont know why' and others are 'in pieces'.
They still have good transformers and cases so they are great cores for building a big DIY home made inverter unit.
All of them listed are not working and have had circuit board failures that took them down.

I will also have a few other goodies too. Two dead L-tec plasma cutters. They have bad control boards but good power supply's.
I also have a set of 40 amp hypertherm plasma cutters too. They are the old transformer style ones. One works well but the other is the spare parts machine for it, and is missing a few minor pieces but could easily be rebuilt on the cheap.
There is a pile of assorted plasma cutter torches and cords too. Some work some dont. A few workable units could be put together from the pieces.

I will post a list later today of what I have and what I want for it. Most is going on eBay 'as is not working'.

I am going to be doing some out of state work and am leaving around the 20th and need some quick cash for spending while I am gone!

 

[tcmtech]

Here is the list.

Inverters
Trace RV2512. 12 volt 2500 VA X4 $100 each
Trace DR2412. 12 volt 2400 VA $100
Trace DR2424. 24 volt 2400 VA $100
Trace DR1524. 24 volt 1500 VA $80

Heart Freedom 25. 24 volt 2500 VA 230 volt out x2 $100 each
Heart Freedom 25. 24 volt 2500 VA 120 volt out $100
Heart Freedom 20. 24 volt 2000 VA 230 volt out x2 $100 each
Heart Freedom 20D. 12 volt 2000 VA 120 volt out $100
Heart Freedom 7. 12 volt 750 VA 120 volt out $60
Heart Freedom. Combi $40


Plasma cutters.
L-Tec PCM 1000i. Bad control board and no torch. $250
L-Tec PCM 750i. Bad control board and no torch. $200
Hypertherm HT40C Good condition and works well. $350
Hypertherm Max 40. parts unit only, Missing a few components but is repairable. $150
Thermal Dynamics Econopack 50. parts machine. $100
Thermal dynamics Pack Master 100xl. parts machine $125

Miller S-60 Four roller comercial wire feeder. Works good $600

Exide 3CA-9 6 volt 200 amp hour comercial deep cycel batteries. Fair conditon and still holding charge, 8 good 2 have cracked cells. $25 each.

2 G.E. Constant Voltge Transformers. 208/240/277/480 input 120/240 output. 5 KVA $750, 7.5KVA $1000

Misc plasma torch cords and heads. too many to count and identify. Many work, many dont. The whole lot for $300

The inverters and L-Tec plasma cutters are disassembled but I have all the parts that came with each of them.

 

[BrownOut]

Why do you have so many dead plasma cutters? I paid $1200 for mine; gosh I hope it lasts for at least 20 years.

 

[tcmtech]

I do welder and plasma cutter repair as part of my business. I also worked as the service tech for a welding supply company until corporate shut down the service department thinking it would drive up sales of new machines if the customer couldn't get the old one fixed. (genius move there.) When the department was shut down I bought up every parts machine I had there.
I also go around to auctions and what not and buy up dead machines and fix and sell them later. Its not uncommon for me to buy and sell 10 -15 machines in a year.

A dead commercial plasma cutter can go for under $50 at an auction and cost as little as $25 to fix. Then sell for $1000 - $3000 fixed!

The ones I have listed here are ones that are not cost effective to fix or are just older models that are not portable. I can get $800 for a 40 amp suitcase style plasma cutter but only $200 - $400 for a non portable one.

 

[HiTech]

Those Trace inverters are top shelf stuff. The Heart Freedom isn't no slouch either but IMHO, Trace Engr. is quite the snazz. Forget the Exide batteries and wire one to a bank of Trojans... now we're cooking with gas!

 

[BrownOut]

tmctech: that's totally cool. My first career was as a welder, and now is one of my favorite hobbies. I picked up a Miller plasma cutter a couple years ago. Just a hobby/farm quality unit, but I love using it. I have a whole shop where I do metal work. I don't get to spend the time I would like there to really develop my skills as a metal worker, and wouldn't want to try to make a living at it.

I hope you do well with your business. There is nothing better than independece!

 

[tcmtech]

Trace is top shelf? There stuff is still 60 cycle transformer based and yet has the simulated sine wave output! They could have done far better for far less in my opinion!
I found their design unnecessarily complicated and 90% of the control system could be done with simple analog or with a simple micro controller design from technology known 20 years ago.
The over complicating of a simple switching processes is what killed them. The early designs from decades ago were simple rugged and reliable. These all died from being cheap,unnecessarily complicated, over engineered, and poorly built in my opinion.

Its why I never got around to fixing them. For the time it takes to trouble shoot a circuit board on one of these I can build a basic analog driver system that can do everything these can but with only a few IC's.

All of the remote interface capability is pointless junk as far as I am concerned. 99% of the people I know with inverters just need simple and reliable. They dont need all of that networking and interconnection garbage.

 

[tcmtech]

If you have the newer version of the Miller plasma cutters with the hypertherm torch system treat it nice and your grand kids will still be using it! Miller really did a super job on the new models they came out with about 5 years ago. The company I was at sold a lot but I never had to do warranty work on them! Personally I think Miller had the service department design them and not the engineers!

I used to tell customers dont by the machine the sales person recommends. Buy the one the service tech recommends! He knows what comes in every day and what doesn't!

 

[HiTech]

Trace making modified sine wave inverters? Yeah, since Xantrex acquired them! The pure sine Xantrex inverters are Trace made... not the other way around. Yes, Trace does produce MSW inverter/chargers, but again the pur sine models are labeled as Xantrex. That's what happens when there's a corporate takeover. Even the ProSine units are under Xantrex control.

 

[tcmtech]

I never did much reading on who acquired who. The ones I have even show a modified sine wave output on some of the body decals. Thats horrible to find out they slid down hill so badly in design after being taken over. I didn't know.

That makes them look like even worse over engineered junk to see how complex the circuitry is just to make a 60 cycle modified sine wave output using a LF transformer!
I and most high school electronics class students can make a reliable self regulating control circuit to do that with one IC and less than 20 additional circuit components! And for under $20!

 

[HiTech]

You have to remember that incorporated in that over-complex design is a 3-stage charger and automatic switchover, hence more circuitry. MSW inverters aren't all that bad. You only need pure sine units for sensitive equipment such as certain medical/life support or digital stuff that doesn't do well on MSW inverters.

 

[tcmtech]

True. but we have guys here that are masters of the multistage charger IC's and I know there are dedicated power monitor IC's as well. That still only adds a few more dollars worth of control components.
And realistically the micro controller guys we have here could knock out a full sine wave output with multistage charge control and power transfer all on a $20 micro controller and 3 inch square circuit board.
I am not arguing against trace be rather the unreasonable amount of wasted time and cost that was required to build these the way they did.

 

[OutToLunch]

I can't say that I am familiar with the inverters that are being discussed here, but in commercial (and even industrial) targeted products there are a lot of design elements that are added to a product that may seem somewhat overdone but are likely there to obtain regulatory compliance or meet certain safety standards that are required to obtain the UL and/or CE mark. There may also be added complexity for other purposes such as high temperature / high humidity operation or other such aspects that, if not designed in, would certainly make the product much less complex.

 

[HiTech]

^^^^ What he said .... heck just take a look at a SONY "BR" television schematic. You don't even want to read one of their professional video recorder schematics!

 

[nike6]

not overdone in case of a lightening.

it can induve 4 kV into power grid (4,000 volts).

you do not want computer PSU to explode with a 120 dB bang.

 

[heatherbowers]

Do You Still Have the Trace DR1524?

 

[shokjok]

Any problems exporting these items to Canada? I could drive down from Saskatchewan.