Kevin is welding the top onto a new sculpture called She and decided to use Longevity’s new MIGWeld 250 MP, a MIG welder with pulse. Because the sculpture skin is 16 gauge steel, he is using the 250 MP MIG welder.
Using its digital control panel, Kevin is still trying to “wrap his brain around” how the pulse function works on this machine. He has it set for 2T, which means when you pull the trigger the machine welds, and when you let it go, it stops welding. The display also shows that the welder is in pulse mode. Then Kevin sets the preflow. The next setting is arc force – he says he doesn’t know why, because that’s usually a stick setting, so he skips over that. Next is the welding current. Because he’s just welding 16 gauge steel, he turns it down a little. Then he sets the burnback time, which tells the machine to send a little bit of current through the wire to burn back end of the wire so it’s at the right length for the right amount of stick out (or amount of wire you want sticking out).
It’s time to see if the settings are right and make a weld with the single pulse. Before he begins, Kevin explains that pulse welding allows the current to drop down from its regular setting to a lower current for a little while, and then goes back up. That allows you to weld thinner metal at a higher amperage and get better penetration without blowing a hole right through or warping the thinner metal.
Next Kevin welds a nice long weld. After he’s done, he shows where he started out, where he was a little slow in his forward movement. Where he got moving, the weld flattened out nicely. In the next section, he had gone over some previous welds, so the weld was a little high – he’ll use a grinder to normalize it. The last section gives a good look at how the MIGWeld with single pulse joined two pieces of thin metal.
Kevin is going to play with the welder more and tackle the double pulse when he figures out those settings better.