A viewer asked, “How the heck do you turn the pulse on? I can’t find the buttons.”
Kevin turns on the welding machine and shows its LCD screen and which button to push to make 3 additional menus pop up!
As you page through, you can see the little red box indicate which setting you are on. In the pulse submenus, the first setting is Pulse Frequency – that is actually how many pulses per second you get. Kevin has his set at 1 pulse per second.
He also shows a cool trick: if you push in on the knob, the settings advance more quickly. Without pushing on the knob, the settings go up by a tenth. Push in and you can get wherever you want a whole lot faster, up to 250 pulses a second.
Next is the Base Amperage setting, which is a percentage of your welding amps.
Finally is the Time On setting. Pulse is on for that amount of time, so it’s the percentage of time it’s welding at the base amps.
So that’s how you get to the pulse settings on the AHP AlphaTIG 203xi. It’s a great welder! It has plenty of functionality. And once you get used to the pulse, get it in your brain what it’s for and how you use it, it makes your work so much easier.
Definitely, if you have pulse on your welder, play with it, learn what it does and how you can make it work better for you.
What does pulse do? The pulse function takes your welding amperage up and down. Pulse is going to go from, say, 100 amps down to your base amps, say, 50 amps. Your pulse time on is how many milliseconds the welder is going to stay at 50 amps, and then it will go back up to welding amps again. So you have 100 amps to weld with, to melt the metal, and to add your filler.
If you’re working with 16 or 20 gauge – thin metals – the pulse really comes into its own because you can get a burst of welding amperage, then the amperage drops for however long you set it.
That allows the metal to cool down a bit so you’re not constantly dumping 100 amps on really thin metal and warping the heck out of it. You’re just going to hit it and get away, hit it and get away.
Kevin uses pulse on metal up to about 1/8″ because pulse creates a better looking weld, a more consistent weld, and more consistent beads to create a prettier weld.
Kevin appreciates you watching. Please reach up and hit that notification bell so you know when the newest videos come out.
Well, you might want to stick around for another moment to let Kevin mess with your head ….