Kevin is playing with the stock foot pedal for the 2015 AHP AlphaTIG 200X TIG welder. He says that, if you have one of these pedals, you know they have some idiosyncracies.
The 2015 pedal for the AHP doesn’t have the rheostat control for adjusting the amperage like the one the earlier models, which he says is a good thing. What drives him crazy with this foot pedal, though, is that when he puts his foot on it, lifts up and presses again, the pedal wants to scoot out from under his foot.
After a while, that gets pretty annoying – you have to keep reaching under the bench and pulling the pedal back toward you and get it in the right spot.
One of the welders on Weld.com posted a photo of his fix for the problem. He made a large wooden “footprint” for the pedal that allowed him to anchor it with his heel. He took a piece of 3/4″ plywood and made a big foot to go under the pedal. He bolted the welder’s pedal onto the wood, with enough material on the back for his heel with a little lip. That way the pedal stopped running away.
Another solution is to simply replace the pedal. The welding store at Weld.com has SSC foot pedals that fit the AHP Alpha TIG 200X. They’re American made and really comfortable to use. The SSC’s pedal’s spring tension is much lighter than the stock pedal, making it much easier on your ankle and foot.
The cool thing is that it pivots just like a gas pedal in a car. It also has a sticky surface on the bottom and nonskid material on the top so your foot will stick to it, and it has a bigger surface area.
One caution: Kevin emphasizes that, if you call SSC or go out to the store on Weld.com, make sure you specify that it’s for the AHP AlphaTIG 200X 2015 model. These foot pedals are not interchangeable! Other foot pedals probably won’t work.
Now Kevin is ready to try out some low arc initiation with both the stock pedal and the SSC aftermarket version. He wants to see how low he can get it to light an arc and see if there is any difference. He’s never done this, so it will be news to him, too.
The AlphaTIG 200X is ready to go. Kevin is using a 3/32 E3 tungsten and straight argon. He has his main amps set at 50 – that means that’s as high as the welder can go if he depresses the pedal all the way. He’s going to just barely touch the pedal, though, to see how low he can go ….
The amps bounce around a little but start at 0 and go up to a high of 18.
Using the SSC pedal with everything else set the same, Kevin tries it with minimum amps. He pushes it up to 25 amps, but as Kevin points out, the two pedals are pretty comparable electronically. The big difference is ergonomics. How does your foot feel? How does your ankle feel?
Kevin likes this pedal, something he bought himself.
Kevin’s ready to go back to work, but you might just want to take another moment to see him caught off-guard ….