Quote Originally Posted by performance View Post
Point is, that, no matter what we do, the gripes, and complaints continue and don't even seem to diminish. Since we put our announcement about the foot pedal arrangement on the site, we regularly get threads just like this one complaining about the fact they didn't know it had a separate knob.
Jeepers Mark, just after I decided to drop the whole issue after seeing all the bigger fish you have to fry with the 250 EXT post I read this... If look back you'll see that my original question dealt with trying to validate a method of using the display to preset the maximum current. It still seems a bit unorthodox to have the primary max current control on the pedal with no remotely meaningful pre-arc display indication except in stick mode. Having the pedal override the panel knob and also changing the operation of the digital display are definitely two different actions. After reading the 250 EXT thread and a few other pedal related posts I get impression (perhaps wrongly) that the overall welder design focus is on torch switch functionality and operation. Perhaps at the expense of the pedal and pedal operation being somewhat of an afterthought (and not strictly a product cost limitation). Is building a version of the pedal with this added control pot really more cost effective than utilizing the existing panel knob and display for TIG pedal operation? I'm not going to even open that can of worms since it's probably not the focus of this forum to entertain detailed design trade-off discussions.

Would I be happier if the basic display worked in the manner I and some other expected? Sure but I'm satisfied with the basics and my 200 DX continues to enable me to make some darn nice welds.

Gary