I purchased a Smiley/Riland 200 amp TIG a month or so ago. Been in Cali so I haven't had a chance to mess with it any until this past weekend.

Cleaned up my work area a bit, bought quite a few feet of angle iron and square tubing. Built the frame for a welding table and laid out the plans for a welding cart for the TIG unit






Ran a new 220 for the TIG and plugged it in to make sure it was working. All good there, so I move on to trying to get familiar with the controls and such (new to TIG welding). Which is what leads me to my reason for posting.

Okay on the front panel, you have a Negative and Positive opening to plug in the ground clamp



Well when I plugged the ground clamp into the Negative slot, I get nothing. So I plugged the ground clamp into the postive slot, touched the torch to the metal for a second or two, lifted and I had an arc. So obviously I'm going to leave it in the postive slot but I wanted to know if that's DCEP or DCEN?

 

Not Answering you question, but shouldn't the unit be HF Start? Why did you scatch start it?

 

I didn't scratch start it.........................The unit is a Lift Arc...................Or so I thought
Anyhow, went and played with it a minute or so and looks like it is HF (Since it does AC and you can't lift arc Aluminum)


Here's Millers dictionary link. Scroll down to Lift Arc and click the link for a short video.
http://www.millerwelds.com/education/dictionary.html#

 

Where did you get a Smiley AC/DC unit?I only ever see the DC units on ebay.

 

he sells them every now and then; seems that riland; smiley; mitec and chirry are all the same company.

I nearly bought that exact tig but itt didnt have a foot control and i found that if you look hard enough you can get a name brand used tig for about the same.

 

No foot control kinda sucks.I googled it and found one on ebay for 799 ending in a hour or two.AC/DC is what i want for nice auminum welding as DC only kinda still leaves me fucked for intercooler work.Damm talk about thread jacking. :1

 

DC Arc can be used for aluminum. High Purity Helium must be used and a different electrode.

It is not as easy though.