What was causing you too go through so many tips??Thanks for that Hitachimad, now it makes sense. Maybe now I wont go through so many tips!
hey hitch it sounds like you know your stuff. ive been welding for about 10 years but have never learned how to "fine tune" a welding machine. i just learned about burnback today when there were people laughing at me at work today when i couldnt fix that problem. Im hoping you could tell me what the other controls that are there do to your weld/welder. 10 years and i got laughed at...my welder ego is at 0 and i know its time to do my own schoolin.Hi Radar.
A 'burnback' control sets the amount of wire to 'burn back' after you release the trigger of your torch. For example, with a max burnback, once you have finished a weld, the wire will burn almost right back to the tip.
Just set it somewhere in the low to middle and you should be ok.
I’m not denying shroud size makes a difference. I know it does. I could of wrote an essay on each individual case scenario if I had the time but as you’d already covered that in your post I thought I’d say some different points and elaborate the most important one that really makes more difference than the others. Wind conditions.Torch/shroud size does have an impact though like I said - you need enough gas to fill the shroud and provide a tunnel of shielding and a bigger 'pipe' (business end of shroud) has a bigger cross section so needs more gas to fill it.
Like a hosepipe, a certain flow of water that gives a nice uniform and consistent stream out of a 6mm bore will be a useless trickle out of a 20mm pipe - but a good flow through the 20 will spray all over the place and do no good through the 6...
Size is far from the be all and end all, but it's an important variable that should be considered.
Well, it is if you're switching between torches or taking advice from someone else (especially if you've got a 14 and they're running a 36 for instance) - if you only have the one available to you and you're set to it then it's no longer a variable
My first portable snapon machine (a small cebora IIRC ) had built in timer on the burn back and was a pain it left far too much wire sticking out, and for thin work, weld stop /human pulse welding, was virtually impossible so I checked the circuit and there was an RC resistor capacitor circuit on the board with four caps, so I reduced the number of caps one by one, till down to one and that was perfect for all my needs, I could have used a variable resistor or potentiometer to adjust the time and fitted it to the controls but didnt need it, it just worked at either end of the scale. as was. I was going to send it back to snap on coz before it was useless for bodywork.Burn back control isn’t available on all machines but that doesn’t mean it’s not there. It’s just not adjustable. If it is there to adjust it’s a nice little feature to pre set the amount of wire sticking out from the tip when you come off the trigger. If it just stopped dead your wire would be stuck to the job. And too much you’ll be changing the tip every run.
Could not agree with you more... I learnt on scratch then years later moved over to HF, known a few guys that wouldn't entertain scratch but I always argued with then it was their technique that was lacking rather than the machine.Tig, well - lift is fine, scratch is fine, HF is fine. Different techniques for starting and stopping (and controlling the gas) but they all work. If someone says that HF is all and that scratch/lift is useless then they aren't a tig welder in my book...
My first portable snapon machine (a small cebora IIRC ) had built in timer on the burn back and was a pain it left far too much wire sticking out, and for thin work,......
I just bought a Rtech 180 and I’m pretty pleased with it, but I found it annoying there was always an inch of wire poking out after every weld.
Then I discovered that if I left the torch in place briefly after I released the trigger it would actually burn back to exactly the length it needed to be. I assume that is built in burn back.
After many years arc welding I was so used to pulling the stick out quickly after the weld was finished.
After many years arc welding I was so used to pulling the stick out quickly after the weld was finished.
I tried that today and it worked. Release the trigger, a quarter of a second later pull the torch away. Once I sussed the delay needed it became simple. I'm not sure if there's a capacitor bank in this machine or not, or what the inductance value is, but it works with what's there.Hah, that's exactly what I've found recently - and I was treating the torch the same way as the stick - get it out of the way sharpish. I must try that above.