Welding Tips and Tricks

Gentlemen,

I own a Oerlikon CITIG 1500 AC/DC machine that has no remote control capability (foot pedal). However, I’ve read that it is actually possibile to wire some internal connections to enable remote intensity control via a foot pedal. Does any of you have hints on how to implement this modification?

The machine is this one:

https://www.oerlikon-welding.com/tig-ac ... citig-1500

Many thanks in advance and Merry Christmas.

Here's a thread from a different forum where the guy did a great job documenting how he added a foot pedal to his machine. I think this is the youtube video made by the same guy.

Thanks for the links. I’ve watched the video but I need to go through the thread. If I got it correctly the foot pedal controls the intensity from the minimum to maximum current of the machine, but one cannot (with the modification), control from minimum current to a maximum user’s defined current (but I might be wrong).

Thank you again for sharing.

lrossini wrote: If I got it correctly the foot pedal controls the intensity from the minimum to maximum current of the machine, but one cannot (with the modification), control from minimum current to a maximum user’s defined current (but I might be wrong).

Yes, good point, I hadn't thought about that. My first thought would be to make a voltage divider using the front panel control position as one of the resistances. If you could get your hands on a detailed schematic of a machine that has a remote control connection you could see how they do it. There is an electrical diagram for my SW200 in the owner's manual, but it only shows things at the board level so you can't really figure out what's going on.

Here's a sketch how you can add a second pot to limit the max current: This is how my pedal is wired. You can place the pot wherever you want, in the pedal or on the front panel.

lrossini wrote:I own a Oerlikon CITIG 1500 AC/DC machine that has no remote control capability (foot pedal). However, I’ve read that it is actually possibile to wire some internal connections to enable remote intensity control via a foot pedal. Does any of you have hints on how to implement this modification?

Done it on my CITIG 1500 AC/DC. Luckily it's not hard

They are internally identical to a lot of other welders that are all made/sold by the Air-Liquide 'umbrella' like the Cemont Smarty TX 160 alu, Air-Liquide T 150i AC/DC, SAF-FRO SAXOTIG 160 AC/DC, etc. etc...

The pin header inside the machine that the current torch-switch connects to is the same across all machines and many of those listed above do come with pedal options, but for some odd reason they decided to only give the Oerlikon CITIG 1500 a torch switch and not wire out the pedal connection.

I suspect it's beacuse price-wise it was already close to the base model of the more expensive CITOTIG series so they removed it for marketing/sales reasons..

The pin header on the circuit board is pretty standard size so you can get a female for that and just bring out the wires.

I've put a SAXOTIG manual up.. You'll see that it's the spitting image to the CITIG. The schematic in the back is a little more extended: SAXOTIG manual

The pedal works as described by the others here. The only 'trick' on these machines is that you also need to short/connect 2 pins on the header.

This disables the front panel amps control and lets it take the input from the potentiometer. This actually very simply flips a relay on the PCB to switch the amps input from the front-panel knob to the pedal. Very simple and rudimentary

Of course this means that with these machines (by default) the pedal works from 0 - 150A weld current all the time. Adding the second potentiometer as show before allows you to change the range so from 0 to 'full' on the pedal becomes adjustable to an upper limit.

This Old Tony on youtube used to have the same/similar machine and added the extra 'upper threshold' pot on the case of the welder itself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KInGWLBwcE

I'll see if I can still find the pinout I used for my welder on the header and what the pins do..

Bye, Arno.

I am doing exactly the same modification, using the manual of the SAF-PRO Saxotig 160 ACDC. That is a very very similar machine which has the same controlling card and could be delivered with pedal.

Here below is a pic with the 7 pin connector (blue) in the middle, which is the inlet for the external control. On the picture you see a green wire which I used to verify that joining pins 3 and 7 activates a relay which changes from the front panel potentiometer to an external potentiometer. Unfortunately on this machine we need another potentiometer specific for limiting the pedal current, it cannot be done with the original one as it gets disconnected.
Here you see the schematics of the 7 pin connector on the circuit board and the connector of the torch.
- Pin 1 and Pin 2 are already wired on the front panel connector. To be connected to the two cables of the switch inside the pedal.
- Pin 3, Pin 4 and Pin 5 need to be connected to the 3 cables coming from the potentiomenter of the pedal. If your pedal has a limiting current pot, nothing else to do. If your pedal does not have limiter you will have to install it on the front panel of the machine if you want this option. The schematics are the same as shown some posts above.
- Pin 7 needs to be joined with pin 3 to activate the external control for the pedal. You can do this internally on the pedal side, so the machines changes automatically when you plug it. In my case, I prefer to install a small switch on the front panel to change manually. That way I can leave the pedal always plugged and decide when I want to use it.

We also need to wire the front panel connector, because Oerlikon decided to leave it unused This is a pic of the same, were you will need to weld 3 cables and take them to the pins 3,4,5 on the circuit board.


Regards