Welding Tips and Tricks

Maybe a bad one I got. ... The dial to increase/decrease the wire feed is junk. I have to turn it up to 200 before it will engage the motor and even then it's jerky (unintentional pulse? lol). Pretty much worthless for a TIG wire feeder. I have a digital motor control with a remote picked out. When I get a chance I'll switch it out. Anyone else buy one of these? Your thoughts? Did I just get a bad rheostat/potentiometer?

Possibly a dodgy potentiometer, shouldnt be hard to change out mark wires before taking off etc. Getting the right resistance would be the trick or maybe get a better one might give fine tuning a new meaning Can't honestly say I have ever used one, or evena manual filler dabber for that matter, I can play all I want with the toys but as soon as I get paid to do tig its usually a dc scratch rooter job or ally fixit out to buggery somewhere.
If it works like a basic wire feeder, check spool tightener, rollers, liner, etc. You know the smaller always goes wrong stuff. If its new it may not even have a liner for whatever reason. They always do but then theres that one time, like when you pick a car up after service and no one put oil back in kinda thing . Check everything, its worth it.

Not to go off topic, but are you using a tig feeder due to production demands, like welding very long lengths of sheet metal or due to issues feeding the rod by hand?

Also your name wouldn't be inspired by drizzt do'urden by any chance would it? one of my favorite series

sbaker56 wrote: ↑Thu Nov 11, 2021 8:20 pm Not to go off topic, but are you using a tig feeder due to production demands, like welding very long lengths of sheet metal or due to issues feeding the rod by hand?

Also your name wouldn't be inspired by drizzt do'urden by any chance would it? one of my favorite series

My thought process on buying the feeder was that I get some very small thick to very thin stainless parts I use a positioner for. To keep the heat out of the thin and get penetration on the thick with 1 continuous bead, I prop my hand and start up the positioner. By feeding the wire by hand (this is a 1" diameter part) my hand is like a jack hammer trying to keep up. Since the dial is no good, I can't adjust it down far enough to do me any good. I just bought
this for it. Yup, I own all the books (hard covers). Awesome read!!

Looks like you've got a plenty valid reason then, definitely not a lack of skill problem . As for the unit itself, can you contact the MFG, warranty it? That just sounds exceptionally sloppy for over a $1000 unit. Possibly a bad/loose connection, turning the dial up is increasing voltage enough to send an intermittent signal perhaps? If it's not a bad rheostat/potentiometer as you've theorized, a loose connection/poor solder joint would be my second best bet, checking all my connections is always the first thing I used to do when diagnosing issues like those.

sbaker56 wrote: ↑Mon Nov 15, 2021 6:42 pm Looks like you've got a plenty valid reason then, definitely not a lack of skill problem . As for the unit itself, can you contact the MFG, warranty it? That just sounds exceptionally sloppy for over a $1000 unit. Possibly a bad/loose connection, turning the dial up is increasing voltage enough to send an intermittent signal perhaps? If it's not a bad rheostat/potentiometer as you've theorized, a loose connection/poor solder joint would be my second best bet, checking all my connections is always the first thing I used to do when diagnosing issues like those.

Thanks for the pat on the back, always nice to hear ... read ... be acknowledged.

The dial they have on the unit is a plug and play, straight from the potentiometer and connected to the board with a 2 wire Tamiya connector. The controller I have coming is an upgrade, with the remote and screen, so not worth the warrantee hassle. 35 bucks and I am up and running better than it was supposed to be if I had bought it working correctly.