While this TIG machine is not a bad little unit one of its annoying limitations is how it treats a pedal. When a pedal is added on unless it is of the dual knob variety the pedal will always do 0 to Max (200) amps. What you really want is to be able to set the max Amps that can be dialed up with the pedal while having the pedal giving you increased resolution across the new amp range. This is something you want to be able to do when working on thin materials or when doing operations that are sensitive to heat variations, such as aluminium welding or TIG brazing with Silicon of Aluminium bronze.
So this is the rig I have. 200Amps, DC and AC capable and pulse. Its not silly expensive but is still reasonably capable for a home machine.
After some digging about with the pedal wiring I figured out the pedal plug has the following wiring:
So after a bit of pondering, net snooping and checking with Bruce I came up with this circuit:
So doing a hack check with a spare 10k pot I had about.
[youtube1]https://youtu.be/ZY01y39beP8[/youtube1]
Finished "soap on a rope" control box. The switch essentially enables/disables the pedal by allowing me to stop the internal pedal switch from activating. So when in the "OFF" position I can push the pedal to max and adjust the peak amp setting that flooring the pedal will give without having the welding activate gas and the HF start. As you can see I managed to rip a bit of plastic out when drilling the switch mounting hole. One of those blistering four letter word moments. But a little superglue and its all sorted and perfectly serviceable. If it ever breaks completely I think I will replace it with the aluminium version.
And the overall look. :-)
Ultimately a very simple mod and for anyone with a Wave 200KD machine well worth the effort. You could probably do the same thing on any machine that has the maxamp limitation.
Cheers,
J