Posts Tagged ‘Telwin’

She’s A Beauty!

Posted: October 7, 2011 in Tools and equipment
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So I have wanted to add a Millermatic 252 MIG to my line up of welders for some time now however it has never been in the budget. Since it continues to not be in the budget I have at least bought myself some time with my latest addition to the garage family. I was offered a Silver Beauty 220 V MIG welder for free and so I decided to welcome it into the garage to see what it could do.

Now the Silver Beauty brand of welder’s are not considered a quality welder. The welders were made by the Italian company Telwin and distributed by Triple A Specialty Co. out of  Chicago Illinois. I am unsure what years the Silver Beauty line of welders were sold from however I am certain they are long gone however Telwin continues to build their own line up.

The top nozzle and tip was the original Silver Beauty set-up. The lower set-up is the Miller retro fit.

The model I received was the Silver Beauty 90130 which I have no manual or specifications for. All I can tell you is that it’s a 220V model which has way more jam then my Millermatic 135 110V setup.

The welder had some issues and it was not exactly useable when I received it. The power supply all seemed to work however the gun was screwed up. The gas cup was destroyed and someone had screwed on the wrong tip. A trip down to the local welding supplier confirmed what I knew would be true…no parts available. I wasn’t about to sink any money into this freebie unit but I needed to come up with a solution. I took my Miller MIG gun apart and compared it to the Silver Beauty’s gun. With a little bit of lathe work I was able to machine a brass adapter to allow me to convert all of the guns consumable components to standard Miller components, in fact the same MIG gun components I run on the Millermatic 135. It all worked beautifully. With some cleaning and adjustment of the wire feed mechanism I was able to feed wire through the gun 100%.

 Since I am short on shop space I pulled my Miller MIG of its cart and set it on top of the Silver Beauty. I then built a tee fitting to allow me to feed my BlueShield welding gas into both machines.

 After spending sometime playing with heat settings and wire speeds I was able to lay down some fairly respectable beads. Looks like the Silver Beauty is a keeper…at least until the Miller 252 enters the scene.