Older Syncrowave 250 vs. New 250DX

[CPCasting]

We've had a couple of Syncrowave 250 units in our shop for almost ten years and recently purchased a new 250DX. We've had some problems setting this new machine up to operate like our old 250's and our dealer has been nearly useless in helping us with our problems.

1. When the Amp control on the unit is set to, say 200 amps, the foot control, all the way down, will only show around 160 on the display. What's up with that??

2. We've always used our older 250's in HF Start mode but the new 250DX doesn't operate the same way in HF Start mode. It doesn't start with a steady arc, it takes off with a kind of "machine gun" arc, on-off-on-off-on-off, with the interval between on & off decreasing each time until a steady arc develops several seconds after activating the foot pedal.
It's hard to describe but hopefully you get the idea. It seems like it's intentional & not a random malfunction, in that it's very consistent in the timing of the "machine gun" effect. Once you get past the "machine gun" effect it seems to work normally, it just makes it very hard to start precisely.

We've found that we get a nice steady arc from the start when we put it in Continuous HF mode but the HF interference is also continuous when it's in that mode. With our old 250's we get the same steady arc in both the HF Start and Continuous HF modes, so we're not sure why the new machine is different.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

[jamscal]

Hopefully a real expert will chime in but here's what I think:

You set the amps to 250 and only 160 shows up:

I think the material isn't capable of absorbing all the amps, and the 160 is the actual amps you're using at the time. Maybe if you held the torch in place, to the point of melting through, the 160 would keep going up.

Sorta like you have a 200hp car but you only need 60 to cruise at 35mph.

Machine gun start: It sounds like that's what my Dynasty tries to do on dirty metal or with a poor ground.

Do a test with freshly ground metal, new tungsten, clamp directly on the new metal, and see if it doesn't work better.

Also, my machine will do that if the tungsten is too far from the work.

Good luck,

James

[Craig in Denver]

I can't answer your questions, but the 2008 Catalog says: "Syncro Start Technology for customized arc starts, allows for more precise arc starts and fine-tuning based on tungsten diameter and material thickness."

At least it sounds like the machine IS adjustable to fix this. It's a shame your dealer is useless.

[CPCasting]

Thanks for the input James

I'm more inclined to believe it has something to do with the foot pedal just not giving up the full amperage, because if we turn the dial all the way up to 250 then the foot pedal will give us about 210. It just about 40 amps behind the set amperage.

On the second problem, I'm not sure it's a ground issue but we could try clamping directly to the workpiece. Like I said before, it's very consistent, almost timed, so I don't think it's accidental. I don't know what the purpose would be though because it's just plain annoying.
We just setup the machine so the tungsten was brand new, and our metal is perfectly clean, we cast it ourselves.

I think the material isn't capable of absorbing all the amps, and the 160 is the actual amps you're using at the time. Maybe if you held the torch in place, to the point of melting through, the 160 would keep going up.

Sorta like you have a 200hp car but you only need 60 to cruise at 35mph.

Machine gun start: It sounds like that's what my Dynasty tries to do on dirty metal or with a poor ground.

Do a test with freshly ground metal, new tungsten, clamp directly on the new metal, and see if it doesn't work better.

[jamscal]

The last 250dx I used went up to 310 amps. Maybe if yours only goes to 250 there is a problem.

-James