Found the limit of my mig

I have a Century135 mig welder that I have owned for about 12 years now. It served me well but this weekend I had a pretty big job to do assembling some products I sell and welded for about 1.5 hours almost non-stop. Then I noticed that the arc and wire feed would just start to stop intermittently in the middle of a weld. I'm pretty sure I was hitting the dutycycle limit as this unit is only rated at 20%. If I waited about a minute in between 3/4" welds it was ok. Does this sound right? I never had this happen before. I expected if I ever hit the dutycycle limit it would just shut down.

It does sound about right for a transformer machine. You may have done terminal damage to it. The fan should keep running to cool everything. Ours wills top welding, though the wire will continue to feed.

You may want to give it a once over and clean the insides. It was likely overloading the welder, but at 12 years old, it likely has a bit of dust and dirt built up. Fan could be on its way out as well and not flowing enough air if the bearings are getting sketchy.

I've thought that I was going to hit the duty cycle on my Imig 200 a few times when I was pushing hard to get a project done but I've not had the duty cycle light come on yet. Apparently this machine has a higher duty cycle than I do!

Yeah I was thinking about pulling it apart and giving it a good cleaning. Good thing to keep me out of trouble this weekend.