new 210ext owner

[weirtech]

hi, my name is aaron. i live in waterdown, ontario. i just picked up a 210 ext a couple weeks ago.

i've been welding on and off since 2001. i am a tool maker by trade, but started welding out of interest in cars. i turned it into a business which i ran for 6 years. i've only recently gone back into my tool and die making trade a few months ago.

i had a miller 180sd that i had bought from new in 2004. i sold it and got the 210ext.

now the miller had very few options which made welding simple. i have no problems with the 210ext, but i am just curious what settings other people are using for welding aluminum? i've searched and thought there might be a thread dedicated to people sharing their settings for different materials but was unable to find one.

if someone could link me to one that would be greatly appreciated.

i'll post up some pics of some of my work in the next few days and what my settings are.

cheers,
aaron

[Kempy]

Welcome to the forum Aaron another Canadian.
I did try a 210EXT once it will take you a will to get the hang of it I have a 250EX and used a Hobart 250 TigWave for over 30 years and it is a change at the beginning but a few week and thing are a lot better the welds are so much smaller and lots of penetration. You can email Duncan or phone him about the settings. down load the manual (http://www.everlastgenerators.com/do...Tig-210EXT.pdf) it will help.
Good luck

[weirtech]

thanks for the advice kempy. i'm not really concerned with discovering the settings and how to adjust their parameters. i made my own manual after watching the youtube video. playing with the settings is not a problem at all... understanding how they effect the weld process is where i need a better understanding. i'm hoping to get input from people who use the same welder. i'm here to learn from other's experience and to share my own.

so far i'm happy with how it welds. i've left the default square wave for ac. i've added 25 p/s with a frequency value of +10% to help with cleaning. i experimented with sine and soft square waves but didn't have positive results. the square wave seemed to be the most stable arc. i also played with slowing down the p/s down to 5 but i found the pulses too slow and it was difficult to get heat into the base metal at lower amps. i haven't really played with the other settings a whole lot, but i'm curious to learn how the effect welding. if someone else has played with them i'd be very appreciative to hear their results.

cheers,
aaron

[piopio]

i have a kinda european version of that machine,same features and settings etc.different colour
+10% seems very high.on clean,new aluminum i normally use -20.i was repairing a twenty year old mower last week with terrible,corroded dirty alu and only got to -3%.
thats with a 2% lanthanated tungsten.9 times out of 10 i just leave it in advanced squarewave,ac freq at 100,balance at -20.pulse i rarely use,maybe on .060 or less.
weldingtipsntricks 30pps,30% on time,30% backround amps is easy to remember and effective.1 pulse per second can be handy to get into a rythm on thicker sections

[weirtech]

it seems to work well on ss.

[ncsugrad2006]

Now that's some purdy welding!

[Mr120]

Nice job. Those are some really uniform beads.

[m j mauer]

Nice Verry Nice.

[youngnstudly]

You do some very nice work there! I am really excited to try welding with a TIG that has all the pulse options as well as A/C capability since my simple DC machine has none of that stuff. Jody's weldingtipsandtricks videos are really helpful and inspiring! Welcome to the forum, I look forward to seeing more of your work on here. I rely on inspiration to getting me motivated, and lately I've been lacking in inspiration.

[weirtech]

i've found an aluminum setting that seems to work. i prefer to not use the pulse at all. it seems to throw my rhythm off.