Welder Help

Okay, today, my welder stopped working. It's been acting funny lately. Sometimes it will stutter, and it isn't conistant. After a good amount of use, it reaches it's load capacity. I'm pretty sure thats what happens. Yesterday it met that load capacity within 15 minutes, of small beads. Today while welding, it stuttered and stopped the arc then spattered again. Then completely shut off. I look over, and smoke was emitting from the lower region of the welder. It now will not ground itself. I opened up every panel, and nothing looks to be fried. However, the large coil of wire in the lower part of the welder was fairly hot. There is also a burning smell coming from somewhere, but I cannot tell where. Does anyone know what might be the problem? And, does anyone know of a place that you can buy replacement welder parts?

Thanks

If it makes a difference, the welder is a Hansen MIG 160A.

Did you check your somoflange, Jp, So do you think it was from overloadin it or do you think it was more from shortin on the ground

I think it could have been overloaded. It was only a 160, so heavy welding was pushing its limits. My friend borrowed it to weld up his notch and box his frame. He used it on the setting 9. I only needed it to be at 7 to weld my notch, and 8 to do 1/4" to 1/4" welds. And I know he did a lot of welding with it on that high setting. I used it for a total of about 10 minutes when I got it back, yesterday, to weld some links together. It shorted out putting the second one together, an thats when the box smoked.

It could have been the ground though, maybe. It will not ground whatsoever now. The wirefeed still works perfectly, but it will not arc now. I also cannot find any fried wires internally. I took all the panels off to check it out.

so it wont feed wire through the welding lead or it wont strike an arc up i know you said the wirer feeder is working but is it pushing it out the end

Yes the wire does feed just fine. It just wont arc when I touch it to metal or directlt to the ground.

last welder i seen do that it had a chip board in it go bad. so as long as your wire leading from the ground clamp to the inside of the welder is all ok and so is your positive side then it sounds like more than a quick fix i hate to say

What is the chip board? I don't mind if it's some work to fix, I just want my welder working again.

It seems like the smoke could have come from the large coil in the middle, that the ground connects to. It was also pretty damn hot when I opened it, but that could be normal. I don't know, I've never messed with a welder before.

the boards are different they adjust you voltage and wire speed and any other functions like the ones we use at work have a crateor fill option and theres one that controls that and if that coil smoked somewhere then you might not be completing the curcuit to strike the arc so look hard and see what you can find you might half to take it to a shop and have it looked at a service dealer or go to where you bought it from and have them find the nearest service dealer