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HTP2400 Arrived Today!
Well, it finally got here today: a brand-new HTP2400 with a 15' gun and a 20' RSG250 Spoolgun. HTP told me on the phone that there would be some minor assembly involved and that I would have to connect a couple of wires in order for the spool gun to work, so I thought I was prepared.
The machine, which I'd requested be shipped via freight as opposed to UPS, arrived at 4:03pm today via---you guessed it: UPS-Freight. It seems UPS purchased Overnight and Overnight is HTP's alternative to UPS. Nonetheless, said welder arrived in a heavy-duty reinforced box, shrink-wrapped to a wood pallet, with two other boxes of stuff and was in perfect order when I unwrapped/cut everything away. GORGEOUS machine!
Unfortunately, after being told by HTP that I'd be "welding hard in 45 minutes or less", things were not as well-put-together as I'd been led to believe:
The 12' power cord didn't have a plug on the end, none was shipped, and I hadn't been told I'd need one. Fortunately I have a brand new Speedway Series 300A MIG welder sitting in the corner that I bought at a sale for $500 and have never gotten to work, so I was able to salvage the plug from it. The two rear wheels and axle were readily apparent in one of the boxes, but it took me about an hour doing something else before I thought to pull the panel off the wire-feed box and take a look inside....where I found box # 3 with two FRONT wheels, 30 bolts, 30 washers, and 30 lock washers. I also found my gas hose and reg, but the gas hose didn't have a connector on it....I finally found the connector in the same plastic pouch as my extra contact tips/nozzles. It slips on, but there's no O-ring or hose clamp with the kit...not that it really matters since my spool gun shipped with its own gas hose with connector professionally installed and that's all I was worried about.
Also, the ground/work lead ships inside the same box as the two front casters, and I spent a pretty frustrated first-hour thinking I wasn't going to be able to use my machine until I drove to the LWS to buy one or had HTP overnight me one. I found the box inside the wire compartment about 15 minutes before I was planning to call HTP to raise he$$.
There isn't so much an Operator's Manual as there is 8 or 9 pages of paper stapled together with some safety precautions and some nice pictures of what the welder should look like once it's fully assembled, so putting everything in it's proper place took a little while. The spool gun shipped with 2 full wiring harnesses, so as soon as I had both sides off the machine, I sat down to check 'em out and look at the two typed pages of instructions that tell you what wire goes where and how.
Now, I've done a few months of industrial electrical work working for 8 different Master Electricians in one plant, so I'm not a total dummy when it comes to wires. I've hard-wired and hand-crimped everything from 22ga 48V low-current stuff up to and including 460V cable, but let me tell you: if you don't know a crimper from a crumpet, this is NOT something you want to attempt!!! If you order the same combo I did (2400/RSG250), do yourself and favor and buy your favorite electrician AT LEAST a case of beer and invite him/her over to do the honors....unfortunately my favorite electrician is on assignment in Iraq right now and this job is due on Friday.
One wiring harness involves 4 connections and 8 different wires. You have to disconnect 4 wires from a wiring block on the "guts" side of the welder and route them through the firewall into the "wire" side and then butt-splice them with 4 butt splicers that are included. Not terribly difficult other than the butt splicers they sent with the kit were for 12ga wire and I was dealing with 22ga....ugly in the end, but effective.
Time involved with welder since unpacking: 1hr 30 minutes.
Next, the second wiring harness with 12 - 24" leads must be routed from the "wire" side over into the "guts" side. 4 of the wires must go to the four that were disconnected for the other plug/harness, and the other 8 require disconnecting 4 "blade connectors" and 2 additional hardwired connections, installing the 8 included blade connectors and 4 hardwired connections, for a total of 24 wires that have to be screwed with for this harness. The wiring block on the back of the potentiometer is a little difficult to understand and the 2 typed pages of instructions with 4 pictures doesn't really show you what you need to know all that well. Other than that, the only real problem I had was that the 12 leads from Harness # 2 are stripped back about 1/16 to 1/8 inch and the hardwire connections I had to strip back another 1/4" to get them up into the bottom of the wiring block. Not terribly difficult, but not exactly easy either. Oh, and when dealing with the wiring block, you're going to need a flathead screw driver along the lines of those little silver electronics screwdrivers...standard small flatheads like Kleins and Ohms won't fit into the connector-screw protection wells. Having one on-hand (and I had 3 by chance) will make this project go much faster.
Time Involved Since Unpacking: 2 hours 20 minutes. So much for 45, huh?
Well, v-time, right? Plugged the welder in, connected the spool gun to my spare bottle of 100% Argon, and fired 'er up without a care in the world!
The 2400's heat settings are a little difficult to get used to, or they were for me. There are 4 "rough" heat settings (1 being lowest heat and 4 being highest) and then there are 6 "fine" heat settings (again, 1=low, 6=high). So in other words, setting 2,6 would be followed (increased) by going to setting 3,1.
I pulled out some scrap strips and tube, brushed them off with a wire brush, and dropped the hood and pulled the trigger. After figuring out what was decent and what was not, I figured out that 20cfh was NOT enough for the RSG250! The SG controls wire-feed in the bottom of the handle, so after getting the heat right, wfs right, and gas right, here are the settings I ended up with for welding 1/16" thick 1" square aluminum tube:
Heat: 2,1
WFS: ~~40
Gas: 40cfh
After dialing in those settings, it was like a light bulb went off and a choir of Angels started singing (or humming, as the case may be)!!! I got more welding done in an hour and a half than I've gotten done in the last 3 days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It was a ROYAL PITA (Pain In The A$$) to get this thing set up and going, but I could NOT be happier with my machine!! The beads were pretty and strong and shot out that gun like a greased pig outta the rodeo chute!
I'll take some pics and try to get 'em posted tomorrow night. For now I gotta get some shuteye so I can go play with my AWESOME new toy tomorrow!!!
~Clint
The machine, which I'd requested be shipped via freight as opposed to UPS, arrived at 4:03pm today via---you guessed it: UPS-Freight. It seems UPS purchased Overnight and Overnight is HTP's alternative to UPS. Nonetheless, said welder arrived in a heavy-duty reinforced box, shrink-wrapped to a wood pallet, with two other boxes of stuff and was in perfect order when I unwrapped/cut everything away. GORGEOUS machine!
Unfortunately, after being told by HTP that I'd be "welding hard in 45 minutes or less", things were not as well-put-together as I'd been led to believe:
The 12' power cord didn't have a plug on the end, none was shipped, and I hadn't been told I'd need one. Fortunately I have a brand new Speedway Series 300A MIG welder sitting in the corner that I bought at a sale for $500 and have never gotten to work, so I was able to salvage the plug from it. The two rear wheels and axle were readily apparent in one of the boxes, but it took me about an hour doing something else before I thought to pull the panel off the wire-feed box and take a look inside....where I found box # 3 with two FRONT wheels, 30 bolts, 30 washers, and 30 lock washers. I also found my gas hose and reg, but the gas hose didn't have a connector on it....I finally found the connector in the same plastic pouch as my extra contact tips/nozzles. It slips on, but there's no O-ring or hose clamp with the kit...not that it really matters since my spool gun shipped with its own gas hose with connector professionally installed and that's all I was worried about.
Also, the ground/work lead ships inside the same box as the two front casters, and I spent a pretty frustrated first-hour thinking I wasn't going to be able to use my machine until I drove to the LWS to buy one or had HTP overnight me one. I found the box inside the wire compartment about 15 minutes before I was planning to call HTP to raise he$$.
There isn't so much an Operator's Manual as there is 8 or 9 pages of paper stapled together with some safety precautions and some nice pictures of what the welder should look like once it's fully assembled, so putting everything in it's proper place took a little while. The spool gun shipped with 2 full wiring harnesses, so as soon as I had both sides off the machine, I sat down to check 'em out and look at the two typed pages of instructions that tell you what wire goes where and how.
Now, I've done a few months of industrial electrical work working for 8 different Master Electricians in one plant, so I'm not a total dummy when it comes to wires. I've hard-wired and hand-crimped everything from 22ga 48V low-current stuff up to and including 460V cable, but let me tell you: if you don't know a crimper from a crumpet, this is NOT something you want to attempt!!! If you order the same combo I did (2400/RSG250), do yourself and favor and buy your favorite electrician AT LEAST a case of beer and invite him/her over to do the honors....unfortunately my favorite electrician is on assignment in Iraq right now and this job is due on Friday.
One wiring harness involves 4 connections and 8 different wires. You have to disconnect 4 wires from a wiring block on the "guts" side of the welder and route them through the firewall into the "wire" side and then butt-splice them with 4 butt splicers that are included. Not terribly difficult other than the butt splicers they sent with the kit were for 12ga wire and I was dealing with 22ga....ugly in the end, but effective.
Time involved with welder since unpacking: 1hr 30 minutes.
Next, the second wiring harness with 12 - 24" leads must be routed from the "wire" side over into the "guts" side. 4 of the wires must go to the four that were disconnected for the other plug/harness, and the other 8 require disconnecting 4 "blade connectors" and 2 additional hardwired connections, installing the 8 included blade connectors and 4 hardwired connections, for a total of 24 wires that have to be screwed with for this harness. The wiring block on the back of the potentiometer is a little difficult to understand and the 2 typed pages of instructions with 4 pictures doesn't really show you what you need to know all that well. Other than that, the only real problem I had was that the 12 leads from Harness # 2 are stripped back about 1/16 to 1/8 inch and the hardwire connections I had to strip back another 1/4" to get them up into the bottom of the wiring block. Not terribly difficult, but not exactly easy either. Oh, and when dealing with the wiring block, you're going to need a flathead screw driver along the lines of those little silver electronics screwdrivers...standard small flatheads like Kleins and Ohms won't fit into the connector-screw protection wells. Having one on-hand (and I had 3 by chance) will make this project go much faster.
Time Involved Since Unpacking: 2 hours 20 minutes. So much for 45, huh?
Well, v-time, right? Plugged the welder in, connected the spool gun to my spare bottle of 100% Argon, and fired 'er up without a care in the world!
The 2400's heat settings are a little difficult to get used to, or they were for me. There are 4 "rough" heat settings (1 being lowest heat and 4 being highest) and then there are 6 "fine" heat settings (again, 1=low, 6=high). So in other words, setting 2,6 would be followed (increased) by going to setting 3,1.
I pulled out some scrap strips and tube, brushed them off with a wire brush, and dropped the hood and pulled the trigger. After figuring out what was decent and what was not, I figured out that 20cfh was NOT enough for the RSG250! The SG controls wire-feed in the bottom of the handle, so after getting the heat right, wfs right, and gas right, here are the settings I ended up with for welding 1/16" thick 1" square aluminum tube:
Heat: 2,1
WFS: ~~40
Gas: 40cfh
After dialing in those settings, it was like a light bulb went off and a choir of Angels started singing (or humming, as the case may be)!!! I got more welding done in an hour and a half than I've gotten done in the last 3 days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It was a ROYAL PITA (Pain In The A$$) to get this thing set up and going, but I could NOT be happier with my machine!! The beads were pretty and strong and shot out that gun like a greased pig outta the rodeo chute!
I'll take some pics and try to get 'em posted tomorrow night. For now I gotta get some shuteye so I can go play with my AWESOME new toy tomorrow!!!
~Clint
. Looking foward to some pictures ... so far sounds like a decent machine.
the Dyn200 comes without a plug, but it will run off about 10 different power options so i suppose it kinda makes scenes to not ship with a plug. is the HTP2400 multi voltage optioned ??
feel free to shoot me an e-mail direct i have time to chat.
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