Kevin is scratching his head over dual pulse welding because he has been playing with the Everlast Power i-MIG 253 DPi in the dual pulse setting.

Dual pulse is when you can control welding voltage AND welding current independently of one another. It makes Kevin’s brain hurt, but he is learning how to master settings that seem to work pretty well.

Kevin has two pieces of 1/8″ 4043 aluminum clamped to his workbench. He then goes through the settings on Everlast’s 253DPi, because can be tricky.

The machine is set on Synergic, which means it’s going to take care of some of the pulse settings on its own. The welder is set on 2T, .030 wire, 4043 aluminum, and dual pulse.

On the main panel, Kevin goes back to the beginning and sets the preflow at .3, and inductance is set at 6. The peak is set at 145 minus 2.6 percent. Pulse time on is set at 65 percent, and pulse frequency is set at 3.9.

The welding voltage – which is the bottom of the peak – is at 63 minus 3.1 percent. Burnback is turned all the way down, and voltage is set at 0 because he is welding aluminum and doesn’t want to burn the wire back up into the tip of the gun.

Kevin explains that he only needs to set the voltage pulse because the Synergic system is setting the amperage and wire speed commensurate with the voltage, so the machine is taking care of half of it. You don’t have all of those numbers running around in your head.

With the settings ready, Kevin puts on his welding safety equipment and butt welds the aluminum.

Then he shows the results. The weld looks a little smoky, simply because of the cold aluminum sitting on top of a cold 1″ thick steel table. As he welded more, the weld warmed up nicely. You can see some cleaning action on the latter part of the weld.

The back side of the aluminum revealed that the weld did not get good penetration, however. Kevin thinks the welder was probably set too cold.

Kevin says he needs more practice, more time reading the welder’s manual, and more time playing with the aluminum.

Nonetheless, he hopes this free video gets viewers pointed in the right direction. At this point, Kevin feels that his settings are close to what they need to be. He thinks he could go up a little bit on the on the high voltage and maybe go up a little on the low voltage just to warm things up just a little bit to get more penetration.

Kevin thanks viewers for watching, and reminds them to click the bell to get notifications when he uploads new free how-to videos.

Before you go, hang around and see Kevin discipline the welder ….

See this video now ….