This excellent statement was made by Blaster in a very detailed and informative response on another Board.
" Foremost the welder must understand the relationship between, WFS, voltage, electrode angle, stickout, joint geometry variations, base metal mass, base metal temperature, and how changes to one effect, or can be compensated for, by another. "
It should be the opening line to any answer concerning any question that starts out..."What should I set the machine to when welding XXXXXXXX?"
When I teach underwater welding class that's what I try to get people to understand, if you change one thing how does it affect everything else. As with everything welding is a balance beam, change one and you give up somewhere else. Course we don't have to worry about stick out for wet welding.
you forgot amperage! but I see that it's the wire feed process where it's coupled to WFS and is a CV power supply. A lot of times the approach boils down to knowing which knob to turn first or what to look at. The vast amount of variables mean that it's near impossible to instantly say which settings to turn a machine to.
Even now working in research with a dedicated research team, finite element modeling and a full metallurgical lab; all work boils down to 2 approaches. Guess and check, or educated guess and check.
Those who lived through the days of the 'Green and Yellows' with all the bells and whistles at the fingertips of the welders such as slope and inductance, and those who lived through the early days of pulsing prior to synergic control with frequency, duration, pulse amplitude, background amplitude, rise time, etc at the fingetips of the welder, certainly understand how one thing can 'EXPLODE' everything else.
Leave an inexperienced welder with one of these machines set to weld and walk for about a half hour and when you return you will understand Chaos theory and a butterfly's wings in Brazil.
You must be refering to the old "prison green" refrigerator sized Linde GMAW units. The @#$%$%%&%#$s in the Armco shop I broke out in back in the '70s would run over and give the hand wheels a crank or two as soon as you dropped your hood.