Today's Dubious Use of Time and Money

[spro]

Going way back to Edison light bulbs and vacuum tubes, one could see the filament, one filament burn at the edge and it would flicker around. If the voltage was just right, it would reweld itself and work a time. Glass fuses, not so much but there is a minor explosion in there with little solder balls. Dubious at best. Un trustworthy.

[spro]

BTW Steve G , You pulled the trigger and invested I the TIG unit. Much good information has come from this and I thank you for tireless investigation and evidence.

[Harold_V]

I don't actually know what the resistance is. I was looking for an open circuit, so when I didn't get infinite resistance, I dropped the test leads without paying attention to the number. I can look at it again.

It would be worth the little time it takes if you hope to understand what happened.
The point I tried to stress is that just having continuity isn't a test of a fuse. It must be low resistance as well, otherwise it's not a fuse, but a heater.

Yeah, I know. They're supposed to get hot, then fail, but only when excessive amperage flows.

The blob is a "feature" of this type of fuse. I was looking for replacements on the web, and I saw a brand-new slow-blow fuse with a blob.

Cool. I can see that I could be wrong on that. I'm not a fuse expert and am not familiar with all construction types. Still, if the fuse has high resistance, it's not good, and is the problem.

Harold

[SteveHGraham]

I would go and measure the fuse again, but I have lost it for the third time. It should pop up in three or four days. When I was at Home Depot buying replacement fuses, I also bought a nice plastic box with little compartments, and I planned to put all my glass fuses in it, but wisely, I chose not to use it.

In any case, thanks for pointing out something which should have been obvious.