Hello everyone.
Welding newsgroup seems defunct. This may or may not be excessively abstruse .
Continuing welding, working in a FabCo. More than 4 months back at it now.
"My" welding machine, a Miller MigMatic 320i, is a Constant Voltage GMAW / MIG welding machine. It seems to be internally an inverter, but is Constant Voltage output. It is an "economy" industrial machine.
Everyone else has "pulse" machines, which are minimum 5X the cost.
"My" situation is made more difficult because almost all our thicknesses are in the 5mm to 8mm range - right where for Constant Voltage you will be in the "globular" transition domain between dip-transfer (lower thicknesses) to spray-transfer (higher thicknesses) fundamental physical domains. So I am forcing "I intend spray and finagle it to be so" or "I intend dip and make it so". Crazy big adjustments of both wire-feed-speed and Voltage between different welds on the same job.
For the "pulse" machines this is a non-point - they are in pulse all the way from low powers up to high powers, with no transition range. Nice "just right" fluid weld pool etc. through the range.
I suspect the pulse machines with their "proprietary special high-productivity" pulse modes sense how long the arc is and where the weldpool surface is - that they are "fly-by-wire".
I met / found this almost 15 years ago
Anyway - to the question...
The "pulse" machines seem to have such a broad "good zone" you simply set the thickness, irrespective of joint geometry, etc., etc., etc - and it welds perfectly.
With "my" CV machine, I have a great big archive of welding conditions for each {thickness; joint geometry; high-penetration or high-deposition; etc., etc.} Then unique jobs with special conditions.
10's into maybe hundreds of them.
So the CV machine has a very very narrow "good-zone" / "sweet-spot"; while the "pulse" machine with seemingly its "fly-by-wire" has such a wide "good-zone" that you have this "one-size-fits-all" dial-in the thickness.
Anyone else know of this?
Rich Smith