Welding Tips and Tricks

Was trying to run some stick beads tonight with my AHP alphatig. Had some troube at first, because I forgot to switch the control from foot pedal to torch. After I remembered to do that it welded OK. I ran some excalibur 7018 rods first and it really likes those, did a real nice job laying them down and the slag just popped right off. I was running them at 125 amps. But I found something interesting and I am sure it is operator error. I had a hard time running 6011 and 7014 rods. They were running very hot and really digging into the metal, hard. I was running beads on a 3/8ths inch plate, cleaned to bright shiny metal with a flap disk. I ran everything DCEP. the 1/8th 7014 have a range of 120-145 amps listed on the package. At 120 amps on the machine, they were way too hot. I could kind of get a decent bead if I cranked the amps down to around 85-90, which ought to be too cold for that rod. Same thing with the 1/8th 6011. The range is 80-125 amps, and I was having to run these at 65-70 amps to get a decent bead. I am thinking there is probably an arc force setting that I am missing on this thing, or some kind of anti-stick circuit that is not liking the arc length I am holding?

Any thoughts or suggestions? its really not critical, since I still have my beloved stickmate for stick welding. But I would like to figure out what I am doing wrong. The machine TIG welds like a dream. I was laying down some lap welds on 1/8 inch plate tonight and the machine has no problem with that.

Here is a pic. 7018 on the upper right. the rest are a mix of 7014 and 6011

Hello Louie1961,

I have that machine, but really have not done any stick welding with it other than to just run a bead or two. However, and this may or may not apply to the AHP....the manual for my thermal arc 181i ( very thorough manual by the way..) states the the 6011 and 7014 are NOT recommended for use with it. They are both inverter machines so maybe they are similar in that regard.

Also of you were running one after the other on that small plate, then you preheated the metal and would need to reduce the output to compensate.