Patent ID: 8225977

Claim:
A wire feeder for an electric arc welder comprising: an electric motor, feed rollers designed to move a welding wire toward a workpiece during an arc welding process, a welding circuit, a welding wire feed circuit, a controller in the welding wire feed circuit designed to generate a WFS signal to control a speed of said electric motor, and a switching network in the welding wire feed circuit having a first condition that enables said electric motor to operate at a speed based on said WFS signal and a second override condition to cause said speed of said electric motor to be less than said speed based on said WFS signal, a comparator in the welding wire feed circuit having a load current preset value, said switching network shifting from said second override condition to said first condition based on a load current of the motor signal that exceeds the comparator load current preset value and that is independent of current detected through said welding circuit, and a time-out circuit that causes said switching network to shift from said second override condition to said first condition after a predetermined period of time.