Any Advise on the knobs...............

[Easyrider]

Having played around with the welder for an hour or two every night i'm beginning to wonder what the other switches will do ..
Will someone tell me what to try next working on 3mm alloy
I'm running 80amps, 10LPM a little pre and post flow and thats it,
I want to experiment with the pulse settings ??
Any rough guide lines to keep me in the ball park to get going ??

 

[Hitch]

Switches, Top left, AC (ally), DC (ms/ss) right,
2T 4T, trigger latching, 2T is hold the button to weld, 4T press and it stays on, press to turn it off.
Bottom left, Pulse, and normal modes.
TIG, MMA, exactly!

Knobs, left to right....

Gas Preflow, minimal required on this one, especailly if your a learner.
Welding current, in normal mode, and the higher current level when on pulse mode.
Pulse current, measured as a % of peak current.
Current downslope, allows the power to diminish over a set time, good for stopping craters at the end of the weld, and finishing near edges.
Arc force, in MMA mode only (i think) Helps the rod start off a little easier.
Pulse Duty, not sure on that one....
AC balance, higher percentage helps with cleaning action on aluminium.
Gas post flow, allows gas to carry on for a set time after trigger relesed, usefull on thin stuff and near redges, hold the torch in the finishing position for the time.

If your only just beginning, save your gas and dont worry about preflow and have a second or so of post flow.

 

[TheJoker]

Another TIG newbie here..

Pulse frequencey is how often it switches between DCEN (DC electrode negative) and DCEP (DC electrode positive). I think you can change the width of the heat vs. the penentration of it, if I remember hotrodder's instruction.
Then AC balance decides how much cleaning vs heat (can't remember which one is DCEN and which one is DCEP. You can see that "dirt" will be floating away from the heated area much easier in one direction.

However, these are the two ones you should play with. In my very very very limited experience.

Another tip I got was to look at the tungsten through the shiny molten aluminium. It's actually quite pretty. You can align your torch, eyes and everything else up so that when you put heat into the material, suddenly the material melts and turns all shiny, and you can then use the shiny molten aluminium as a mirror to look at the glowing red tungsten. I wish I could take a photo of that. It's beautiful.