Quote Originally Posted by performance View Post
Your arc force IS the change in welding amps. As you push in amps go up to compensate for the voltage loss. It does kick in when volts drop. That's exactly why I told you to push in. That's what triggers it. Burying your rod in the puddle will produce surprising results. Running arc force at 0 will produce no change but at a higher set up it would...but ONLY when voltage drops.. I don't know why you would not run a 6010 with an arc force setting turned up. The volt amp curve refers to the this relationship change between volts and amps. But the voltage which you are running your 6010 at tells me that it is correct, and it's likely your technique that is at fault here. Otherwise it should weld. Don't mean to demoralize you, but the readings confirm you are holding too long of an arc length, and not pushing in to activate the arc force control. The soft/buttery/sharp/crisp arc is a subjective idea of what is going on how the arc force control behaves...not something that is truly tangible.

Arc force is a reactive thing that compensates for the amount of "extra" juice is put into the weld when voltage drops below the threshold, reacting to increase the amps proportionately to the voltage loss. The amount of reaction is set by the arc force control. 0-100% isn't twice the amps you have set, but a relative number that caps the amount of arc force control that is put in at any given welding amp. Typically you won't see more than 50 amps or so increase.
I really appreciate your taking the time to explain arc force - especially as my inverter is not an Everlast one.

I had another look at my inverter's arc force in operation; I watched the Amps Out readout whilst laying a bead with a 6013, and, in my case, the welding amps is exactly determined by the % arc force. So with 75A set, the Amps Out reads a rock-solid 75A unless and until arc force kicks in wherein it jumps instantly to 150A at 100% arc force (and 131A at 75% arc force). And then, an instant later it drops back to 75A as the arc force has done its stuff and caused the arc voltage to rise above the threshold (20V?) at which arc force kicks in.

Do you think the next generation of inverters will have true adjustment of the Volt-Amps curve characteristic, where the slope/shape of the curve would be truly adjustable, from what it is now, a vertical line (constant amps) to a genuinely drooping/sloping curve? Arc force (on my inverter) effectively is an instantaneous jump from one vertical, constant-current line to another one to the right and back again a fraction of a second later, whereas to truly mimic the transformer-rectifier, you would have a downward sloping/drooping line where a decrease in arc volts (shorter arc) would bring about a proportional, smooth and lasting increase in current, and not just at one point on the curve (the threshold voltage). At present, on my machine at least, arc force is a pulse of increased current, whereas in an ideal world you'd have a smoothly increasing current over a range of falling voltage. Of course, it may well be that my inverter's arc force circuitry is fairly basic and not representative of arc force in more advanced inverters out there, certainly, that Miller article makes me think that might be the case.

Given that I believe it's only with cellulosics that you want a sloping curve, all other rods are fine with vertical, constant current curves, you wouldn't necessarily need an adjustable volts-amps curve, just a switch to select the cellulosic characteristic.

Once again, many thanks for your kind input.

Martin