I can't imagine teaching someone to weld aluminum without a foot pedal. Sure once you are good with aluminum, you can go with fixed settings, but not while learning. It requires a lot more skill to go without, because you have to adjust your technique to compensate for the way heat conducts through aluminum. This is especially true if you are not pre-heating your parts, and your parts are not huge. The thing is is takes a lot of heat to get the puddle started, but as the aluminum comes up in temp, it takes less and less heat to maintain the puddle without melting through. With the pedal this is easy as you just keep backing off along the weld. Without it, the only thing you can do is adjust travel speed, arc length and filler rod. Or just stop and turn down the welder. The other thing about aluminum is that it does not give you as many visual cues as to the amount of heat in the part, and how close it is to melting. It's a lot more subtle than steel. The good thing is that once you figure it out, most of those skills will transfer back to steel. So learning aluminum will make you a better steel welder, too. The same thing goes for pulse, upslope, downslope, etc, turn them off for now until you get the feel for the heat. Then you will have a better idea of when to use things like that. FWIW most of those functions can just be done with the pedal anyway. and usually easier and better. For example when you are ending a weld, you will see the crater forming and learn how to get it to fill in as you back off the pedal and add a little rod. Too short and you will leave a crater, too long and you will have a bump. Once you can do that on your own, by watching, you will know how long it takes you for a particular material and weld size, and you will know how much downslope to dial in, otherwise you are just guessing. The machine can't see the weld and make adjustments on the fly, like you can.
Starting with a chunk of 3/16" and just running beads is fantastic advice. Plug in that pedal and stop twiddling knobs, for now.
Welders have been pulsing with a pedal long before that feature was added to machines. Practice, practice, practice, that is what will make you a better welder.
Originally Posted by Rambozo
I can't imagine teaching someone to weld aluminum without a foot pedal. Sure once you are good with aluminum, you can go with fixed settings, but not while learning. It requires a lot more skill to go without, because you have to adjust your technique to compensate for the way heat conducts through aluminum. This is especially true if you are not pre-heating your parts, and your parts are not huge. The thing is is takes a lot of heat to get the puddle started, but as the aluminum comes up in temp, it takes less and less heat to maintain the puddle without melting through. With the pedal this is easy as you just keep backing off along the weld. Without it, the only thing you can do is adjust travel speed, arc length and filler rod. Or just stop and turn down the welder. The other thing about aluminum is that it does not give you as many visual cues as to the amount of heat in the part, and how close it is to melting. It's a lot more subtle than steel. The good thing is that once you figure it out, most of those skills will transfer back to steel. So learning aluminum will make you a better steel welder, too. The same thing goes for pulse, upslope, downslope, etc, turn them off for now until you get the feel for the heat. Then you will have a better idea of when to use things like that. FWIW most of those functions can just be done with the pedal anyway. and usually easier and better. For example when you are ending a weld, you will see the crater forming and learn how to get it to fill in as you back off the pedal and add a little rod. Too short and you will leave a crater, too long and you will have a bump. Once you can do that on your own, by watching, you will know how long it takes you for a particular material and weld size, and you will know how much downslope to dial in, otherwise you are just guessing. The machine can't see the weld and make adjustments on the fly, like you can.
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