Tig welding question about miller syncrowave 180 settings

by rcl

Hey Jody, thanks again for your emails with TIG tips, they are great.



Hope you don’t mind a question, since from your website it seems you are familiar with the syncrowave machines.



For the life of me, I can’t figure out how to set my Syncrowave 180 high frequency parameters.



The Miller manual has a section (see below) where they show you how to set the “TIG Starting Characteristics” – which I think is frequency? - but these don’t seem to correlate?



From the Miller manual...
"
Application:

Select 1 (light/soft start) − when welding at

low amperages on thin gauge material.



Select 2 (medium/normal start) − factory default

setting used for most welding applications.



Select 3 (high/hot start) − when welding at

high amperages on thick materials with a

large diameter tungsten."





From Weldingtipsandtricks.com tips...

1. For Steels, stainless steels, Nickel alloys, titanium etc (everything except aluminum and magnesium)

DCEN, high frequency on start only, Argon gas flowmeter set on 20 cfh with a #7 gas lens type nozzle/cup, amperage switch on remote, contactor switch on remote

2. For Aluminum and Magnesium

A/C, high frequency set to continuous, argon, or argon/helium mix flowmeter set to 15 cfh with a #7 cup if machine is equipped with A/C balance, set it to 7, amperage switch on remote, contactor
switch on.


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Good Question...,

the settings from miller are the start amperage settings and not high freq adjustments.

what i wrote is geared toward the older syncrowaves and tons of other older machines.

the newer version syncrowaves kind of dumb down the high freq setting functions and default the correct high freq modes by process...so if you are set for tig welding on DC, you are automatically set to dcen with high frequency start only that starts the arc but then shuts off.,you dont notice it but thats what happens.
with the machine set to tig with the current set on ac, the high freq defaults to continuous so that it starts the arc and continues to run in the background to stabilize the arc as it alternates polarity at 60hz. (thats what happens on ac)

the only other high freq setting is intensity and its usually located under the front panel. usually a setting of 50% is good. high settings wont hurt, but high frequency is kind of like medicine.... all you need is enough to do the job and more is not always better.

hope this clears things up a little,

jody