Multimatic 200 suitcase welder question

[KB7CG]

Let me start by saying I am not in anyway a professional welder... just a “hobby grinder” so here’s my question... reading my Multimatic 200 manual, it talks about “the Auto Crater is off by default “... what the heck is “Auto Crater”???

thanks

[ryanjones2150]

When you abruptly stop your wire from feeding, the molten pool shrinks and gets a little dimple in it, which is the crater. That crater can be a stress riser, so it can propagate cracking, and often times will. The crater fill feature is an auto setting that will fill that crater when you let off the trigger, it’ll drop the voltage for the very last bit of wire to try and eliminate said crater. I couldn’t tell you if it works or not, all my machines are old and don’t have that feature. What I do, is right after I end the weld, I give it a little zap of weld as the pool cools off. Been doing it that way for a long time and it works.

Hope that helps.

[MAC702]

...What I do, is right after I end the weld, I give it a little zap of weld as the pool cools off...

Same here. No one taught me to do that. I just thought it might work and it did.

[aametalmaster]

I still want a Multimatic200 even though there are better machines out there