Please give me your feedback if you can relate to this or if you strongly dissagree. I welded w/ a miller cst model, it seemed whether you kept long arc, or shorter arc ( for that 1 sec.) while manuevering your weld puddle, it would deposit same amount of filler metal. It wasnt till i went vertical up w/ 7018 that I really noticed it though. The problem I experienced was undercut because ,you didnt seem to have that extra filler metal to deposit when punching in on each side of weld. I did hotpass on pipe w/ 6010, seemed the grounded fitting would pull steady amount of filler metal of my electrode whether arc was long or short. It seemed more evident yet after I cleaned off the weld, its pattern was more V shaped instead of an arched circular depoit look. Now Im not trying to bash the thing. It was excellent in the dept of fighting off molten flux in weld puddle in corner situations etc. I want to buy one of these because of the mobility. If you agree w/ me on the problems I described, please tell me which model I should go w/ on the lightweight inverters. Im strictly smaw welding. Id rather carry 35 lbs. on my side, than 80 lbs. in front of me. But Id carry the extra weight if the 350 would smaw any better. I dont know because I havent had the opporunity to test the other models. Can anyone say, any of the forementioned models in lincoln or miller differ from one to the other with the problems i described? Or is this just the nature of the inverter?
Hello weld123, I believe part of what you're experiencing with the cst has to do with the features of the machine. I looked up the specifications on this unit on the Miller website, it talks about dig features as they relate to running E7018 and E6010 and says something about automatically selecting the dig settings for these two different electrodes. It also mentioned an adaptive hotstart feature that keeps from stubbing out the electrode on starts and such. It is my opinion that individuals who are used to running conventional transformer/rectifier machines or other older technologies may experience a learning curve when using some of the newer machines. I don't know much about the specifics for the Lincoln machine, so I can't comment there. Whichever machine that you are looking at, definitely attempt to give them both a good test drive and if there are adjustable settings, work with them so that you can gain the best understanding of their function and how their adjustments affect the finished result. My $.02 Best regards, aevald
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