Whats Up With Pulsed MIG

[RIVERRAT]

Been reading & talking with some folks in the industry. Some who claim to be experts are making claims that Pulsed Mig is not all it is said to be. Ed Craig is one who makes such claims. Most if not all of his claims are in regard to using Pulsed MIG for carbon & stainless.

The claims that I am hearing are that the Pulsed MIG machines do not last as long nor do they produce as high quality a weld as spray transfer.

Just curious as to others thoughts?

[Rojodiablo]

Can't really say much about using pulse for steel, but pulsed mig for aluminum is reaaallllyyyy nice compared to regular mig.

[ss42768]

Pulse works great on thinner materials. I've got two customers that I just switched to pulse,both are using a Miller MM350P, the first customer builds aluminum carts for the pharmaceutical industry, out of thin wall square tubing, with a traditional mig machine it was just about impossible to dial it down low enough to make the weld without burnthrough. The second customer builds stainless hog feeders, using 18 gauge material, his parts fit up was not the best, and his operators had to trigger their guns on and off just to get a weld in the joint, then they would go over it again to make it look decent, with the pulse mode, we were able to do this with one pass, virtually eliminated all spatter, and the welds look 10 times better. I do not care for pulse on thicker materials, as I think you'd be better off in a spray transfer.

[RIVERRAT]

ss42768, When you say thicker material, what are calling thick? I will be welding aluminum. Joining 1/8" to 3/16" & on very rare occasions 1/4" stuff.

[pulser]

Ed Craig may be extremely knowledgeable and correct in what he says, but IMO his attempt at sharing this information through the endlessly long ranting and raving script on his website is not an effective method. Who wants to read through all that cr@p to get at the pertinent information? The ranting and raving leads me to consider him a bit of a nut with a chip on his shoulder, who's information should be taken with a grain of salt. I have not read any of the publications he sells, so I can't comment on them.

I wonder if anyone here has read Ed Craigs books?

I worked with pulsed spray GMAW, 0.035" & 0.045" E70S-3 & -6, 92%Ar/8%CO2, in a automotive component manufacturing plant. The components were essentially 1/8" thick steel pressure vessels, designed to contain 4000 psig for 15 years. There were over 36 automated weld stations, each producing an 8 - 10 second weld about every 30 seconds. We had near zero problems with the pulsed welding power supplies over the 7 years I was there.

For this application, I think pulsed GMAW was the only way to go, conventional spray would not have too hot, and the arc length too long, because of the higher voltage required. These were relatively small, precise, low spatter welds, in tight joints, with limited joint access, that required a tight constricted pulsed arc.

[RIVERRAT]

Pulser, I agree, he does go on a long winded rant

[Toysrme]

I think plused is great. Especially for high production. You've got the ability to run large wire, at short circuit amperages. And it can grossly reduce operator skill level, which again. Major bonus for the industry at large. Even if the machines burn up every 5 years. Big deal. They'll save 10,000x that machine's initial cost in fewer down time from operator errors & shear bulk savings buying wire!


Plus some of the newest pulse machines (coming online in just the last few years to my knowledge) have been tweaked enough to actually be doing work that 10+ years ago could have been considered smaw/gtaw ONLY.


The entire industry is moving to pulsed, people might aswell follow suite. 10 years from now there probably won't be any new non-pulse power supply's sold for higher duty cycles as inverter's continue to replace older equipment.

[Doolittle]

Yea, but they make that annoying sound

[steve28]

pulsed mig has it's place but aluminum 1/8" and over normal mig mode is all you need!

here is a 1/4" plate i welded up a while back

http://www.weldingweb.com/showthread.php?t=6809

[steve28]

it's true pulse sounds like you caught a fly in a grocery bag!

[Toysrme]

lol it always reminded me of what a gattling gun in real life sounds like once you step up the pps. in reality, their range of pulses is in the same as the rate of fire of most gattling type weapons now adays. hah

[JohnnyWeld]

Speaking of spray transfer . I just tried using 98%argon, 2% Oxy for 316 stainless today for the first time. It was beautiful- The arc WANTS to spray transfer no matter how far out of parameters I tweaked it. And the silent transfer is also pleasing to my ear after listening to pulse mode for so long. Pulsed mode is the cheap way for spray transfer in the long run with out spending for expensive gas mixes or cored wire me thinks.

[Toysrme]

It's also all position... Pulsed FTW

[ifabandrepair]

We have been using lincoln 455 power wave machines at work for 8 years with virtually no trouble, they were a huge time saver as far as clean up, now I am using somthing that is new to me and may have already been being used in some applications, the lincoln rep calls it rapid arc, it is a pulse mode that splits the wave form again or somthing like that, I dont know but what it allows you to do is use a larger diameter wire and still have control of the weld, .045 downhill that is twice as fast as .035, I have been welding everthing form sheetmetal to 1" with it and have not had any problems yet, weld in all positions and makes some of the boring work fun again, best thing I have seen in a while to help a guy get his work done, just my two cents!

steve