Thread: dc pulse capable tig welders

Yeah there is no doubt applications where higher frequency pulse is useful, but I tend to stick around the 1 - 2HZ or over 100HZ and not much in between. I think my machine pulses from .2 to 500HZ. Handy at times on thinner materials and close to edges.

Originally Posted by Corgan

hi guys,

Looking into a new welder. Only require DC as I weld steel and stainless. So far I've been using an entry level cigweld with lift tig only.. I'd like to get a hf unit with pulse capability

Just wondering if anyone has a recommendation. I'm eyeing off a tokentools machine but ir only pulses from .5-25 Hz and I thought there were some advantages beyond this range.

Budget is around 1000 tops

Thanks for taking the time to read. COrgan

Are you mixing up AC frequency on an AC Tig with pulse frequency? If you pulse at 1000 pulses per second with 100 amp pulse and 10 amp base you may as well just set the amps at 55 amps on a non pulse machine because this is the average current you will have.

The reason for pulse / base current is to allow the material to solidify between pulses so yes, 0.5 to 2 pulses per second is ideal. This is not to be confused with the AC frequency setting on AC TIGs as higher frequency narrows the weld arc in that case.

Regards
John

Originally Posted by welding

The reason for pulse / base current is to allow the material to solidify between pulses so yes, 0.5 to 2 pulses per second is ideal. This is not to be confused with the AC frequency setting on AC TIGs as higher frequency narrows the weld arc in that case.

Regards
John

With aluminium this is usually the case so low freq pulsing basically in sync with filler dabs works well, however with other materials such as thin stainless you'd be surprised at the influence of rapid pulsing (usually more than 100 hz) - it is not the same as just proportionally turning the amps down. Try it out.

Corgan, having said that I'm not sure whether it is worth spending extra for higher frequency pulsing capacity if all welding will be on material greater than say 1.6mm. I'm not familiar with the machine you're eyeing off, but have a look at some of my other posts in which you'll see I'm happy with tokentools generally. Cheers - Mick

Hi Mick,

yeah i have noticed tokentools have a pretty good rep around here. was just wondering whether i would be dissapointed with the 25hz limit on the pulse.

for interest the majority of what i weld is 1.6mm stainless tubing

cheers
corgan

I have the token tools arc/plasma and acdc tig. no idea about hz (other than using it with ac tig for aluminium) but i tried out the pulse function (DC at 1 second pulses) on the weekend while welding in some rust repair patches into car guard. Trouble was the patch was 1.2mm but the pannel was way thinner and as soon as it got any heat into it it would just melt away. Tried the pulse for the first time. At 1 sec pulses it worked a treat
For 1.6mm stainless sheet practice i didn't use any pulse so unless you are welding right near the edge or doing long welds I doubt you would need it.

Cheers
James

Originally Posted by Corgan

Hi Mick,

yeah i have noticed tokentools have a pretty good rep around here. was just wondering whether i would be dissapointed with the 25hz limit on the pulse.

for interest the majority of what i weld is 1.6mm stainless tubing

cheers
corgan

Hi Corgan. If you're just using it for those nice tables you do, then I doubt you'd care whether you had very high frequency pulsing or not. So it wouldn't be worth it if that's all you're working on. In fact, as I'm sure you know, there's other ways to manage heat input (backing bars, back stepping, etc.), so even if you ever did get some tricky situation it's not as if you shouldn't be able to handle it anyway. Cheers - Mick

yeah that's fair enough advice mick, i've been managing with an entry level non high freq. cigweld inverter so far so i'm sure i will notice and appreciate any advantage the tokentools will offer, if not just for the HF start. sticking the tungsten and re-grinding gets annoying pretty quick

i reckon i'll give the 160p a go. will let you guys know how i find it

got my new welder in the mail the other day. bit of stuffing around looking for a hose barb for my regulator and i played with some scrap last night.

i'd forgotten how nice HF start is, i only ever used it at tafe and have so far been welding with lift start (which seemed more like scratch start most of the time)

the hf is really useful especially when tacking. one of the tips i got off weldingtipsandtricks.com is cranking the amperage up to about double and blasting tiny little fusion tacks all over the joins, by clicking it on and off in an instant. this works pretty well and after securing my normal 4 tacks with filler i've been blasting these little fusion tacks every couple cm's around the joint for a stronger hold against movement.

other than that, the pulse settings took a while to play with and find what works for me. i ended up arriving around 60amps peak, maybe 15? amps base (the dials don't have number markings except for the min and the max settings) and roughly 20% pulse width. Any higher settings and i seemed to be flattening out the bead way too much and losing control of the bead/undercutting/etc.

what i find really cool is the up/down slope function. i dont have a foot pedal only the trigger control, but i find i can control the bead by turning it off (engaging the down slope) if it looks like its getting too hot, and turning it back on before the downslope finishes. i've done half a dozen full joints in square tubing so far and the HAZ seems much smaller and more controlled than what i'm used to. penetration looks good.

i've found better results at the highest pulse rate the machine can do (25hz) as opposed to trying 1hz and dipping with each pulse. Doing that i found the bead either too wide and flat with a big HAZ, or too cold and difficult to feed filler in if i turned it down even a bit, not much of a happy medium. 25 hz and welding as per normal is working great though to reduce the size of the HAZ

Good news, nice to hear it fired up well for you on it's first welds. Mine although a different brand has the same sort of control, which to me is just fine, Once you understand the function the weld should tell you whether you need more or less and just in small increments. Interestingly the more I use my machine the less I adjust anything much, just fire it up and a little tweak and we're away. Too easy...

yep- luckily i tend to weld mostly the same stuff so not much adjustment necessary.

mostly the mild steel stuff i weld is random tooling for work and more often than not i attack it with stick.

FWIW, on my machine if I'm running 60 amp max, I would normally run about 35-40 base, with around a 1.2Hz pulse. Works for me on my transformer machine, whether it will work for you who knows? I'd probably be closer to 70amps though for 1.6mm, with a background of 45-50.

Just thought I'd throw it out there if you wanted to try it some day and see how it goes, may work well, may not!

Also might mention that especially on pulse, rather than dabbing, I'll often constantly feed the filler, but above the pool, so the heat of the arc is constantly melting a little blob off the end and dropping it into the pool.

Thanks Jekyll - this machine seems to run fairly hot as those settings result in a really shallow wide undercut bead with a mass puddle forming instantly. Seems like 60 peak, 20 I sh base and 25 Hz is working best for an even weld which just barely penetrates all the way through the joint

Originally Posted by Corgan

Thanks Jekyll - this machine seems to run fairly hot as those settings result in a really shallow wide undercut bead with a mass puddle forming instantly. Seems like 60 peak, 20 I sh base and 25 Hz is working best for an even weld which just barely penetrates all the way through the joint

(Very) late reply here, but I had a suspicion that may happen - the tig we had at work for a while was an inverter machine, and it certainly seemed to run about 15 less amps than mine for the same material!

It occurs to me though that my big old transformer Kemppi might not be running at full efficiency on 240v, it ideally wants a 415v supply, wonder if that might explain it. Or maybe my house supply is a bit low on voltage....

Either way, good to hear you seem to have your settings nicely dialled in!