Hello hogan, I believe that Joe may be referring to it that way because possibly many folks think only in terms of using a CC power source to carbon arc gouge with. If you don't have ready access to a CC power source but your CV machine has a contact closure switch you can gouge like a madman with it. Simply turn the volts up(you may need to play with this a bit depending upon the diameter of rod that you are using) and set the contact closure switch for constant output instead of the switchable output that would normally be controlled by the welding gun and go to gouging.
     I would only make one observation with regard to gouging with some of the machines out there, Tig machines and various types of inverters are not necessarily real good candidates for gouging as they tend to not have the bulk and brute ruggedness required by air arc use that can be found in many of the CC sources or the transformer rectifier CV type machines. Most shops that I have been around will keep one of the old dinosaur copper cored machines around for any sort of heavy carbon arc use. Just a bit more for consideration. Regards, Allan

Hogan

Sorry, I know that I didn't directly answer your question.   I inferred that you were having a problem keeping the arc lit with the machine, and wanted to know if you could get some help with the Arc Force knob.  On some machines, the arc force is simply a voltage rheostat, and higher voltage can help when arc gouging.  On newer machines it is more than just voltage, and the effect is not really designed for arc gouging.

I have found that arc force doesn't seem to help very much over all.  It helps on machines that aren't very good for carbon arc gouging, but only for short bursts. Short bursts and constant re-starts do not give nice clean carbon arc gouged grooves.  However, if your machine is a cv-cc machine, using the CV will give you a good arc gouging machine within the amperage / duty cycle limits.