Glad you like it, but keep in mind Im just learning as I go, so don't assume everything I say is correct. I operate on the idea that this is the internet so if I say something that's wrong Im sure I will be corrected in short order. Unlike many I love being wrong about something, to be challenged on a point, its the only way to learn, and as to learning as I go, here is a example.....I should have cautioned people first about these old inverters....but I forgot....these have been out of production for something like 7 to 10 years, and I bet most have been sitting around unused for most of that time....Keep the following in mind using old high capacity power devices...

I hooked this unit up today to run my house.....when I was inside the unit I seen a date code of 2004 so this unit is 13 years old, I bet it hadn't been used in ten years, and never hard.....for all I know maybe it had never been used, I didn't blow this unit out, that circuit board is clean enough to eat off as I got it.
That is not a good thing for high capacity, high(er) voltage capacitors ( not being used) . Large value electrolytic capacitors don't age well unused. in fact if you had a large value NIB 10 year old electrolytic and you drove it to capacity you are playing Russian roulette. There is a procedure for conditioning electrolitics that have sat around.....

This all came to me today after I hooked up this unit.....Luckily I hadn't put any heavy loads on it, but first thing I noticed was a little occasional light flicker, not bad but I didn't remember these units having such a problem, I thought what the puck is going on. then I noticed the output voltage a little lower than I remembered these units put out, my meter said 117 and I had thought these were pretty much bang on 120 but most disturbing of all was my bar graph on my meter ( a 79 (3)), under the displayed value it was pulsing away like a little jack hammer on roids when it should have been rock steady ( wish I had my silly scopes). Well nothing I could do about it , so out I went to plant more potatoes for the day while I scratched my head and thought about it.
Came back in this evening and was sitting down when I heard the fan kick on, and damn if the lights didn't start flickering again and dimming when the fan kicks on.......arrhhhh..time for a thinking beer..

So now a couple hours later....my meter is bang on 120 volts with a input of 12.6 much like I remembered it should be, my bar graph isn't pulsing at all. My lights are still flickering if the fan comes on, but I think I have figured out why, and will give that a while to correct itself.

What I think happened was, I powered the unit up, but these 6 large value caps that filter the ripple out of the 150 volt DC buss had sat unused for so long that they needed the day to condition themselves to being worked again....once they settled in, up came my voltage and away went the ripple ( bumpy bits ) causing the light flicker....that's my story and I am sticking to it.

Now the fan on the other hand has nothing to do with the output, so what the hell is up with that? its still doing it, but I now have a thinking beer induced theory......The fan is turned on by a Fet mounted up in the control section I remember noticing a few small electrolitics in the control section...I am now thinking they may have been there to supply a 5 volt buss ( or 12volt or 15, whatever) for the control circuit, and when the fan comes on the surge to start up loads down this buss for a moment and a few firing pulses for the Fets don't get sent out due to these caps needing a little conditioning....just a thought.... I will give this a few days to correct itself ....anyway the point here is don't have a cow if things seem off at first when powering up electronics that have sat unused for a long time and things don't seem right....just give it time....or maybe the lesson is don't let high power devices sit unused for years at a time.

I took a peak inside my defective (so I thought) new sine wave inverter that I was going to send back, and have them replace....I am traumatised by what I seen, I may need to go to my safe space for a while and recover, if I didn't take pictures I am sure no one would believe me....I should make a you tube vid of it...I have never been inside a unit with this bad of build quality and this bad of design... I don't want a replacement now, my unit wasn't defective, it wasn't built to ever work right, other than by luck. You just cant trust nothing any more, even a brand name manufacturer. Thank god I looked inside or I would be getting another piece of crap as a replacement.

(disclaimer : the god reference, only a expression, I do not thank fictional characters, again just a expression, I am not flagging to others I am one of them.)

nothing to see, move along.

You've inspired me peppercorn. What good are my solar preps if I can't keep my charge controllers and inverters running. It is time to learn more about electronics.

Good for you Doug, actually I am finding this stuff pretty straight forward to figure out, but in using the googler machine few people seem to be repairing or figuring out their own stuff, the manufacturers are useless (usually) in helping a person out, they wont provide the theory of operation, or schematics so It takes a little head scratching .....
I am seriously thinking about a you tube type vid for real world testing, using, tear downs, and repair of off grid type equipment, by a guy who can destroy most any piece of equipment given enough time, maybe some how too, field expedient, improvised, roll your own electrolitics to get your inverter back in service keeping the electric perimeter fence free of zombies, type content. Its coming to me now.....
It could be call The Hour Of Pow Pow Power......not to be mistaken with that other "Hour of Power" show. On mine real things will get done...though just in case I attract a audience looking for that other show, I can have a sock puppet, no wait a finger puppet of Jim Baker preaching to the electronics to heal themselves while I do the real work that he will try to take credit for in the end. We could even have a fight scene at the end to punch it up....This is just a rough draft...nothing carved in stone yet

I may have used a reference that you younger types hadn't heard of, if so you can get up to speed on Jim Baker here, and see the good work he is doing, after getting out of prison for fraud. Production values do look down from what I remember of the late 70s early 80s Though I am warning you once you see this you cant un see it. Who else remembers Jim and Tammy Faye?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnaSvvSqY-8

nothing to see, move along

nothing to see, move along

Lets forget about that sine wave unit I got for now, I think I will rip that thing right apart and rebuild it.

So I went back to using the that mod sine inverter, Life is good again.

I hooked up the most electronically complicated and sophisticated thing I had, a miller maxstar 150. I spent part of yesterday welding up projects including another raised garden.

It ran like a champ. Actually before I headed out to the garage I threw in a load of laundry, so while I was welding using this inverter it was running all the normal house stuff, + a washing machine+ my welding machine. Then when I returned to the house I had a tool that a neighbour brought over needing repair so I fired up my new solid state soldering station for the first time. It too ran perfect, regulating the hot air, and iron temp perfectly , I actually thought It might have a problem with this, but no, it ran fine.

Im just laughing, a 130 dollar, used inverter, used 13 year old inverter, running every thing better than that new sine wave xxx I bought. I had to have been pulling 2200-2400 watts or so just when burning a rod!

so if there are any home gamers playing along, the question off the day is ( I did say there would be a test question) ...are capacitors in the primary boost stage of a solid state high freq inverter needed ?... Their the row of 6 on each of the boost transformers (almost 20000 uf per transformer in this unit).

and DougM this is for you... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-1OSFPHi04&t=972s a guy fixing a inverter...one of those real expensive ones, 2400 + dollar ones....actually this guy makes really good vids, I have learned a lot watching them...

I wanted to give my inverter a good work out, really work the caps in it, so did some welding this morning , cranked the knob on my welder to max, burnt up a few rods in the 140-150 amp range, I guestimate I was pulling 3200+ watts out of that old inverter. It didn't hiccup once, ran real well. Welding is one of the hardest things you can do to stress a inverter, when you try and strike up a rod you are in fact shorting the output of your welding machine, and that short is reflected back to your supply, in my case my inverter, so instantly both the welding machine and inverter must supply everything they have current wise to light up that rod and burn it back away from the base metal that it was shorted to. Then once the arc is established, because the arc is a dynamic load (ever changing) again the supply has to be very responsive to changing arc lengths and must instantly supply the power required or else your arc can stumble and go out. This old(er) unit performed flawlessly......Im pretty sure I will be welding through the apocalypse 😀 Think I will buy a few more of these inverters to have on hand.

One thing that also impressed me with this inverter, was that from where I have this inverter to where I am welding is a distance of roughly 200-230 feet. Its goes the length of the house up to the roof, through the air to the pole in the yard then through the air , off to the garage, through the garage wiring, to a outlet,where I have a 25 foot extension cord plugged in, that then lays on the ground and runs out to my welding machine in front of the garage.....Not good driving such a heavy load through such a long length.

I have been welding up a storm lately, dug out my highly sophisticated maxstar 200,

I hadn't used it in a good while, it was covered in spiderwebs. I hooked it up to my mod sign inverter and it ran just fine, I didn't weld in tig mode just stick, and it burnt the rods no problem.
since I was in a fabricating mood, I had one more welder to test and use for the afternoon A 250 amp AC/Dc, buzz box type...not a circuit board in it in,it uses a mag amp design to control the weld out put.... truth is its a little up the evelutionaly scale from a buzz box, but far below my maxstar welders in sophistication. This is a 240 volt AC input welder, that can hammer out the current, I usually run this off a 220 volt genny but decided to try it off my mod sine 120 volt inverter.......See any conflict there? .who wants to guess...Did it work?

nothing to see, move along

nothing to see, move along

Uh?

While I was correct in my assessment of that product, I may have been unfair to be so critical of their "economical" model. I am some times to rash, so on further thought I think it better that if I am going to examine a low end unit from a manufacturer, I should also included a model built to a higher price point from the manufacturer as well. My thought is build quality may track price....So to be reasonable I took the pictures down. If I evaluate that unit again it will be along side another current model of theirs where a higher build quality should be more reasonably expected.

Looks like I was wrong in a previous post where I said they don't build em like that any more. I have gotten my paws on the newest iteration of that mod sign inverter that was discontinued.
I have been running my place on it for a while and I have to say from a users perspective the output even though its mod sine, you would not know it. This thing is a absolute beast. It weighs 25 pounds, built like a tank, I kid you not when I say I think I could drive over it and not damage it. amazingly low self power consumption( 6 watts).Its a 5000 watt unit, with 10,000 watt surge. More power than I could possibly ever use. I have driven it up to 4000 watts (highest I can go with my battery fusing, and panels) and it doesn't complain. Here is a couple pictures of the inside. There is a total of 10, yes I said 10! boost transformers in it.

I am in geek heaven.

I have already been hacking this unit to see what I can make it do. I have disabled up to 6 of the boost sections and the thing just keeps on running like nothing happened! the step up section contains 40! fets, even if I lost 20 of them this unit would still be able to hammer out a couple thousand watts.

I consider this to still be a repairable (short of a direct lightening strike) by the end user model. No real proprietary parts, everything looks like standard off the shelf components.

I was in the garage and seen a old (1980s) 120 volt mig welder I had long ago forgot about. I plugged it in, and to my surprise, I say surprise, because I didn't expect this inverter to run it, do to the solid state, variable speed wire feed control in the welder but it did! No problem at all...I will have to try that 3000 watt inverter unit again, maybe it too will run my mig welder. The stick welders of course worked just fine, both of them on this 5000 watt inverter but that's no surprise, as they ran on the 3000 watt unit to.