I've got a couple questions about mods to the foot pedal for the PA160-STH. Another thread got me thinking that it'd be nice to be able to cut the pedal out of circuit without having to disconnect it entirely when I switch over to stick mode. Ideally, this would happen automatically when the welder was in stick mode (hint hint: future feature request!) but that would probably require mucking about inside the welder, and might not be compatible with my warranty. I don't know, though--would it be as simple as jumping a pin of the pedal jack over to a pin of the TIG/switch button, causing a certain pin to be pulled to ground when the welder was in one mode or another? Hmm... maybe so. An alternative that would work without opening up the welder would be to install a breakout box on the cable or something like that. The breakout box could have an on/off switch and a pot on it for adjusting the max output, just like the pot that's currently on the pedal, but I would be able to adjust max output without having to bend over and pick up the pedal and push it with my hand.

The second mod that I'd like to make would be to decrease the sensitivity of the pedal's max-output pot towards the high end of its range. As I've mentioned previously, the pedal's max-output pot goes basically from 120 amps right to 160 amps and pegs there for the last 1/8" or so of the dial's travel. Mark has explained to me that the pedal's pot needs to be logarithmic because... resolution. Or something. Sorry--here's my ignorance showing. I don't really have a strong electrical background, but I can solder components together if given instructions! So I'm wondering if there was some mod I could make to the max-output pot to change its response curve to have less sensitivity at the top end. For example, I once read about how you could build a semi-logarithmic pot by putting some resistors in circuit with a linear pot in the right way. So maybe there's a way to change the response curve of this one.

Thanks!