Welding thin Aluminium Square wave Vs. Triangular wave?

[Stueeee]

Still looking to replace my venerable BOC ADR TIG welder with an inverter machine, mostly for easier Ali welding in light material.

Came across a machine that offers (amongst others) an AC triangular waveform; they say: "Triangular Wave: designed for thin alloys, reduces heat input" would be interested in any experience anyone on here has of using this feature, is it really useful for thin material, worth having but not essential, or the kind of feature that is just dreamt up by the marketeers to get you to buy their product?

Any input would be welcome, thanks.

 

[chevy2]

My tig has four wave forms,
Tradional sine wave, advanced square and soft square which i tend to leave it on,
It also has triangular wave which as they say is apparently better on thin materials,

only played with this setting a couple of times and it does seem a bit more forgiving on thinner stuff,
got a couple of jobs to do in the next few weeks that'll be in 16-18 guage ali and one of those jobs will be about 3ft long external fillet welds which should be a good test to see if its any better?

I'll post the results when done.

 

[Jim Davey]

It's definitely not such a high energy arc as square wave, but sinusoidal is even lower energy than tri wave so that's the best for the really thin stuff. There is a fourth option on really clever sets that gives you the option of a square positive or negative wave, with a tri or sinus wave opposite. This can facilitate some really handy benefits like easier welding of thick to thin without melting away the thinner material, or difficult casting repairs where too much penetration drags up porosity from contaminants in the material or building up edges in thin edges with minimal arc wander.
That's the thing with inverters, the output is more adjustable offering some really handy options once you've learned how to use that adjustability to your advantage.

 

[hotrodder]

My kit does square, triangular and sinusoidal and after playing around and experimenting it got set to squarewave and hasn't been changed since. As said triangular does make a difference but personally i don't find it useful... while the arc has lower energy than squarewave while keeping the fast switching i found it 'harsher' and annoyingly loud and it doesn't really do much that can't be accomplished by turning the juice down a nats and/or the AC frequency up unless we're talking say a fillet weld on sub 1mm thick ally which is of little practical use for most of us

Not had the chance to play with posher kit that lets you mix waveforms or set different amperages for EN and EP etc. Those bells and whistle i can see making a fairly big difference on some jobs

 

[Stueeee]

Thanks very much for the useful replies

My tig has four wave forms,
Tradional sine wave, advanced square and soft square which i tend to leave it on,
It also has triangular wave which as they say is apparently better on thin materials,

only played with this setting a couple of times and it does seem a bit more forgiving on thinner stuff,
got a couple of jobs to do in the next few weeks that'll be in 16-18 guage ali and one of those jobs will be about 3ft long external fillet welds which should be a good test to see if its any better?

I'll post the results when done.

Thanks very much also, I would be interested in your view of a direct comparison between the wave forms, and even more interested in seeing any difference in the resulting weld beads using the triangular wave.

 

[zardoz]

As someone who will shortly be making a purchase of a (probably new) AC/DC TIG, I have recently come accross this Triangular wave and wondered about it. If anyone has any pics of Square/sine/Tri wave comparisons I would also be interested and greatfull to have a look.