Learning!

[Ron66]

With everyone's help here I have been learning so I thought I'd share some stuff that I've come across too.
1)When everyone says still air needed that doesn't mean just shut off the floor stand fan. I had the welder too close to my work and the air moving out of that thing kept me from getting an arc to start. I didn't notice how much air was blowing across my weld until I took off my gloves! Moved the welder back and problem solved! Then I sharpened my tungsten and again no arc. This time it was the bench grinder!

2)Don't weld at night with the garage door open. I had a grasshopper the size of a small bird fly right into my arc! I almost crapped myself.

3)The PP256 pedal needs some TLC. It did not work out of the box. The design of the pedal is very poor and I doubt any work as they need to. I have made some improvements to mine and plan to make some more. There's lots of great ideas on this site for how to "fix" the pedal. I hope new designs are in the works.

4)Out of the box check the arc gaps. Mine were mangled. I'm sure they get set at the factory but something went terribly wrong durring shipping. 5 minutes to confirm the points are ok is well worth it on the PP256 at least. They can be checked by carefully removing the front cover. My unit had just enough slack in the wires to get my hand in there and check them but the covers had to come off to set them to the correct gap.

I'm having a lot of fun practicing on aluminum scraps and just laying beads. I think another couple of practice sessions and I'll be ready to try some joints!