Welcome to BOC World of Welding. Today we’re going to talk about the AlphaQ 351 welding machine dedicated to the pipe welding industry. We’re going to demonstrate and talk about the functions of the machine especially the wave forms exclusively designed by ewm for this industry.
It’s a 350 amp machine at 100% duty cycle. We’re going to set a few parameters here and show you the functions and the ease of how to put a pipe root run in and do a fill cap. This machine opens up here. We have a double wire feeder. This side we’re going to do the pipe root run with solid MIG wire. We’re going to use a gas which is an Argon/C02 blend for both sides. Both for the fluxcored and for the solid wire.
It’s simple to set a programme in here. What we look at on the features on here we have all the wave forms. We have a pipe solution which is a programme we are going to dial in on the machine by simply selecting pipe solution which is here, the type of gas, the type of wire and the size of wire so we come across and we dial in 174. 174 is the programme we want to use for this welding application.
Our job list is on the front of the machine. 174 is the job which is dedicated for the root run. Ewm manipulates the wave form in the short circuit mode to give you the desired arc transfer and constant back bead. Once we’ve dialled in the programme then you can select either amperage or voltage or plate thickness or wire feed, whatever procedure you want to run. Today we are going to go on amperage. We can dial in 150 amps. Your voltage will adjust synergically.
We have a couple of trigger functions. We have a standard trigger. We have a trigger latch. You pull the trigger, you let it go, your wire will keep feeding. We have a couple of special buttons for stop timing and also a hot start and a downslope can be introduced into your weld procedure. With the hot start, you pull the trigger, it will ramp up to a percentage that you have dialled in on your procedure, it will come down on your welding procedure, you let the trigger go it will downslope a percentage of your overall current at a given time.
This machine also will allow you to put a pulse programme in simply by pushing this button - pulse on, pulse off.
Another thing we have, the unit is water cooled. Should you want to be doing some forcearc there is a programme in here called forcearc which can be running above 30 volts and water cooled guns are a must if you are hanging onto something above 30 volts. With this gun it comes standard. It has some controls. We have up and down controls for your amperage or flick between procedures. Now should I have a procedure that I like in the root run what I can do here, I can actually change on the gun.
Now that we’ve got our job list set and our welding parameters set we’re ready to weld. I’ve got a 300mm nominal board with a 60 degree included angle, around about a 3mm root gap and a 1.6mm landing.
If you’re out in the market place as a welder and you guys that do some welding out there especially in dragline boom cored welding, excess penetration can fail your job. This monitors your background and will give you an excellent back bead all the way through minimum penetration. This is what these waveforms are dedicated to.
Remember to feather your tacks and stop starts to eliminate any possible root run defects. Once you’ve done your root run you can then move on to the next gun which is your fluxcored fill cap. Pull that trigger, the machine will switch across you’re ready to do your fluxcored fill cap.
Excellent penetration with a controlled back bead and no suck back.