Welding Tips and Tricks

What's the difference between pulse and no pulse? I just bought a tig welder.

Wildwelder96 wrote:What's the difference between pulse and no pulse? I just bought a tig welder.

i find pulse handy for reducing heat into the part. things like thin stainless it comes in real handy.
downside is you need to set it at higher amps, so if your using a small machine you may run out of amps.

Wildwelder96 wrote:What's the difference between pulse and no pulse? I just bought a tig welder.

You should probably look it up in your manual for the welder, but there are several uses for it.

Pulsing alternates between positive and negative to allow you to change what the condition of the arc is. You can often set the on pulse amps and the off pulse amps, different welders call this different names, my Primeweld has a base current, pulse frequency and pulse duty. The base current allows you to adjust the background current which alternates between it and the welding current. The frequency allows to adjustment for the amount of time between both base and welding currents together per second. The pulse duty is the ratio of peak current in a pulse period.

I mentioned there are several things you can use this for, one is to adjust the current so you can weld on thin sections and reduce the amount of heat the is put into the metal so that it is not constant. this works good for tubing and edge welds, stuff like that.

As the current pulses, I like to think of it as applying and taking away amps while you're welding, otherwise you would have constant current flowing through the arc into the metal. The pulse feature allows you to adjust it.

Now someone will come along and correct my terminology, I'm sure some of it is not correct.

TraditionalToolworks wrote:
Pulsing alternates between positive and negative to allow you to change what the condition of the arc is.

positive/negative what?
sounds like your talking about AC not pulse.
pulse simply goes from high amps to low amps and repeat.

tweake wrote:positive/negative what?
sounds like your talking about AC not pulse.
pulse simply goes from high amps to low amps and repeat.

See, that didn't take long for someone to come along splitting hairs!

Yes, I was thinking of a square wave used in AC for that, but I really just meant current.

Split away!

tweake wrote:i find pulse handy for reducing heat into the part. things like thin stainless it comes in real handy.
downside is you need to set it at higher amps, so if your using a small machine you may run out of amps.

I have to admit my explanation wasn't nearly as good as yours... (my tongue is in my cheek)

Wildwelder96 wrote:What's the difference between pulse and no pulse? I just bought a tig welder.

Pulse allows you to set a pattern for how the arc is controlled. You set the max amps, the percentage of time that the arc is at that amperage, a “low period” or background amperage, and how many pulses per second you want the arc to cycle through that pattern.

So an example would be: you’re welding 1/8” stainless. Normally you might use about 90 amps and only be able to weld short distances before the heat would soak up into the base metal and you’d have to stop. Now, do it with pulse- you would probably set 105 amps maximum, only there for 40% of time, a background of maybe 30 amps (enough to prevent cracking) and a pulse rate of 1.2 pulses per second. This gives you a very deliberate arc, it sort of “glows bright then dims” on a nice even rhythm and you can time your movements to it very easily.

A “standard” is the rule of 33: 33% on time, 33% of max amps as your background, and 33 pulses per second. Some like this recipe. I prefer a longer peak, a smaller background, and a very low pulse rate (especially for stainless). For aluminum, I’d go higher, probably 60/40/20. Aluminum needs to keep the heat in the part to break the oxidation layer.

Hope that helps-

cj737 wrote:A “standard” is the rule of 33: 33% on time, 33% of max amps as your background, and 33 pulses per second. Some like this recipe.

This is good for reducing heat input, but you do need about 50% more amps in order to have the arc puddle the base metal quickly. Otherwise it won't do much. That is the missing key that unfortunately gets left out of a lot of advice.

Oscar wrote:

cj737 wrote:A “standard” is the rule of 33: 33% on time, 33% of max amps as your background, and 33 pulses per second. Some like this recipe.

This is good for reducing heat input, but you do need about 50% more amps in order to have the arc puddle the base metal quickly. Otherwise it won't do much. That is the missing key that unfortunately gets left out of a lot of advice.

I am not a fan of that recipe because the PPS is ineffectual to me. Might as well run lay wire with just enough amps.