Welding Tips and Tricks

Good morning , im momentarily working in vietnam and have to deal with the equipment available here, so i took a deep breath and bougth a 200 amp mig machine made in china, it looks well built, but dont have instructions about how to set it up, does anybody can help me with this machine? I sèe it has a reactance control, an amperage control and a voltage control, however, the led displays dont show any value in the screen when you are not welding only shows the values when the arc is is stablished. I have assumed that this thing behaves linearly for the amps, the Maximum is 200 so in the middle should be around 100, and so on, essentialy i experiment before welding with scraps of the same thickness and this thing ďoes a good job, but i would likè to have a better understanding of this machine, i tried to get some information from the company "HYL" it says, but i think unless you speak chinese, it is not like the support from hobart or miller , im including pictures of the front of this chinese creation.

Jody's latest video is all about setting a mig just like yours that comes without instructions or reference chart. It is fantastic information and will fully inform you. As for inductance he has done a video in the past about this also, seek and ye shall find.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... Zuq4XQTHVs

I found manuals for similar models, here:
http://www.iwestore.com/index.php/resources/manuals

Your specific machine is not shown, but the manual for the 180Y seems close. There's a chart for how to set voltage, current, and inductance for various thicknesses of metal. Coldman's post below references the WT&T MIG videos, but those talk about a wire feed speed setting, and your machine talks in terms of voltage and amperage... it's got me thinking about the relationship between those factors.

Does your machine have a switch to set electrode polarity? The other machines have a separate port for EP and EN.

Artie F. Emm wrote:I found manuals for similar models, here:
http://www.iwestore.com/index.php/resources/manuals

Your specific machine is not shown, but the manual for the 180Y seems close. There's a chart for how to set voltage, current, and inductance for various thicknesses of metal. Coldman's post below references the WT&T MIG videos, but those talk about a wire feed speed setting, and your machine talks in terms of voltage and amperage... it's got me thinking about the relationship between those factors.

Does your machine have a switch to set electrode polarity? The other machines have a separate port for EP and EN.

no no swicth for reversing polarity, this looks like a ligth production machine to be used only with CO2

The two basic machine settable parameters of any mig by definition are voltage and wire speed. Mig is constant voltage, wire speed changes amps (as well as stick out and travel speed) so trying to make sense of the digital amps display will be confusing and changing with stick out etc. The amp setting knob on this particular chinese mig must actually be wire speed, just labelled differently to how we are used to seeing it. There is no reference scale to wire speed or even amps on this machine, just a knob with 0-10 numbers on it which really are meaningless.
Jody's video still applies, go back to basics. Use his chart to determine wire speed for metal thickness and wire diameter, measure off 6sec of wire travel and multiply by 10 to get inches per minute. Adjust wire speed till you get the desired speed read off the chart. Light up on some scrap, adjust voltage till the bacon is frying nice, there is the sweet spot for that wire and metal thickness. Write it down for next time. Repeat procedure for all variants of metal thickness and wire diameters and you have created a chart for that machine.
Am I wrong?

Not picking a fight or accusing you of being wrong, just not clear myself for how this machine works. If I told you to drive a typical car in NZ by opening the left front door and sitting behind the steering wheel we'd have a problem, right? I thought maybe this machine was different. On further reading the manual, the 200Y machine uses two labels for one knob: "current" and "m/min" so it appears that the knob labeled "current" is in fact wire feed speed, and since the OP says the meters give no indication during setup then measuring 6 second's worth of wire (times 10 for one minute) is the way to go. Particularly true since the suggested settings in the 180's manual do not coincide with the "metal thickness times wire size factor" math.

It's OK, we're all friends here[WHITE SMILING FACE]

Many thanks for your comments, to all of you, the information that may seem obvious for others, for me its invaluable. Sometimes i read a lot and dont understand,(its my brain getting older maybe), but with your comments i can build a better picture of this machine and also of the mig process. Somehow Its like having the teacher that i have never had.

Artie F. Emm wrote:Not picking a fight or accusing you of being wrong, just not clear myself for how this machine works. If I told you to drive a typical car in NZ by opening the left front door and sitting behind the steering wheel we'd have a problem, right? I thought maybe this machine was different. On further reading the manual, the 200Y machine uses two labels for one knob: "current" and "m/min" so it appears that the knob labeled "current" is in fact wire feed speed, and since the OP says the meters give no indication during setup then measuring 6 second's worth of wire (times 10 for one minute) is the way to go. Particularly true since the suggested settings in the 180's manual do not coincide with the "metal thickness times wire size factor" math.

I have driven the typical car in NZ and found that with a skin full of DB Lager, it actually drove better from the left side.