R-Tec 180 settings.

[Chesterxiii]

Hi, I bought a 180 last week and have been practising with some very thin stuff and some 3 and 4mm pieces. As R-Tec don't supply a guide chart, I've been playing around with the settings abit but I've got to a stage where I'm a bit stumped as to whether the I've found the right setting but it's my beginners technique that's wrong, or I've not quite found the right settings. If anybody has this welder and has a good idea of the right settings for 1mm to 4mm plus, I and maybe a few others would be very grateful for abit of help.
I'm using 0.8mm wire and Hobbyweld 15 gas on a 13 amp fuse.
Cheers.

 

[ben8vgte]

I find with 0.8 set both dials equal then just a tweak is needed on the feed speed up a bit to get it running well, somewhere around 1/4 to 2/3 rds voltage dependant on which of those thickness your welding at the time and on what joint. I cant give you an exact one as I tend to just set it to what I think from experience it should be and run a test before tweaking. You could run a multimeter on the welder and see what voltage you get at each setting then use a look up table.

 

[Chesterxiii]

Ok, I'm still getting used to adjusting wire speed doing more than just giving more wire. More a rapid farting noise than sizzling bacon so far.

 

[neilm71]

Try looking for weldingtipsandtricks on youtube. He has some videos about setting wire speed and voltage for any Mig without charts.
The basic summary is

The current required is determined by the thickness of material roughly 1 Amp per thou inch or in metric 40A per mm
For 0.8 wire multiply this by 2 to give the wire feed speed in inches / minute
Then set the voltage to the correct level of burn back.

So what I would do for lets say 2mm thick steel is

The current needs to be around 80A giving a wire feed speed of 160 inches per minute.
So, pressing the trigger for 6 secs I should get 16 inches which I measure with the tape measure and adjust until near enough.

Once the wire speed is set then I weld on scrap to set the voltage.
Too little voltage results in a fierce crackling or even stubbing the wire.
Too much and the wire will burn back to the tip. Also the arc will be like flashing, going out then coming back.

So play around with the voltage to get a good consistent crackling.

Form memory I think I have the wire speed at 3.5 and the voltage just over 2. This is with 5% CO2

 

[Chesterxiii]

I've written this on a card and put it up on the wall of my shed. I've got a rubbish memory!

 

[Chesterxiii]

Did a couple of fillet welds today 1.5 mm thick after checking the wire speeds and playing with the volts. I'm chuffed with the results, just need to get tidier but penetration was good and looked ok too. Haven't done a destruction test yet though.

 

[Moggie]

Just got my I-Mig 180 and I tested the wirespeed settings this morning. Only went as far as number 5 as I can't imagine going much faster on thin car body panels!

Anyway, I got these figures:

R-Tech I-Mig 180 settings

Apologies it's so rough and ready, but it was only meant to give me a quick figure.
The first column (0-6) are the wire speed settings
The second column is in inches and the third colum is in CMs. (Ignore the S and PS bit! lol)
The first figure in each column is per 6 seconds, the figure after is multiplied by 10 to give the figure per minute. So, if you were to look at wire speed 5, it would be 24.5 inches per 6 seconds and 245 inches per minute. The second colummn for wire speed 5 is 62 cm per 6 seconds and 620 cm per minute.

 

[Chesterxiii]

It just goes to show that 2 machines built the same can be different, even if its only a little bit. On mine I got..

Wire speed setting 1 - 7"
2 - 13 3/4"
3 - 17 3/4"
4 - 21 1/4"
Each for 6 seconds. 1 was less but you were catching me up from 4 though!

 

[Moggie]

The differences are pretty much the blink of an eye or one of us being slightly too slow/quick!

 

[Chesterxiii]

Aye, your right there.

 

[ukracer]

very technical. i just squirt and twiddle.....lol

 

[Stephen McGarry]

I have just bought a one of these lovely welders after reading the recommendations on this forum. I had previously been trying (fairly unsuccessfully ) to weld 3 mm angle iron using a £30 Buzz box and cheap rods. But with 20 minutes of starting to use this welder I was getting great welds.
As there are no charts and being a scientific type I have measured the wire feed speeds accurately (I filmed the drive roller and timed a number of revolutions to get the speed).
These are the results (These are for no-load on the motor so may be a little fast?)

dial m/s inch/min
0 2.0 79.1
1 2.9 115.2
2 3.7 143.9
3 4.3 169.9
4 5.4 213.4
5 6.4 252.0
6 7.6 298.1
7 8.8 347.9
8 10.0 394.0
9 11.5 454.4
10 12.0 471.2

As you can you can see they agree with Moggies numbers (shows he has a good reaction speed)

I will have ago at measuring the voltage settings soon and will post them later (I can't get values from my meter , I think the unit needs to be under load!)
Hope these help other people.

 

[valkerf6c]

Hi, I bought a 180 last week and have been practising with some very thin stuff and some 3 and 4mm pieces. As R-Tec don't supply a guide chart, I've been playing around with the settings abit but I've got to a stage where I'm a bit stumped as to whether the I've found the right setting but it's my beginners technique that's wrong, or I've not quite found the right settings. If anybody has this welder and has a good idea of the right settings for 1mm to 4mm plus, I and maybe a few others would be very grateful for abit of help.
I'm using 0.8mm wire and Hobbyweld 15 gas on a 13 amp fuse.
Cheers.

I'm having the same problem with my R_tech 180, beginning to wonder if a should have bought the oxford or portamig. Then again it could be me☺

 

[AdrianH]

I have done some playing with my R-Tech IMIG 180. Perhaps some may like the see the results, not very scientific as I did not have a stable load, as the temperature raised the resistance went higher so less current.

I used approx 8 metres of braided steel cable 5mm diam as a load for the welder on MIG setting, removed the wire roller so no wire fed out the gun, placed a volt meter on the output terminals in the side of the MIG (Near the wire spool) and using the earth lead and a MMA lead connected up the load resistor!

I set the voltage dial from 0 to Max in stages and took readings here they are:-

Run 1 would have started with a cold lead, by the time I was getting to the top end of the scale it was getting warm,. at 11.2 Volts it was drawing 66 Amps so that was 0.169 Ohms. At Max setting 27.2 Volts it was drawing 106 Amps and starting to smoke. 0.256 Ohm so nearly doubled.

So I decided to repeat it a few more times and take readings, then provide an average. On the last run at 12 Volts output it was 42 Amps 0.285 Ohms, 27.5 Volts gave 98 Amps 0.28 Ohms, so a bit more stable near the end of testing. But it was smoking quite a lot trying to get rid of a potential 2.7Kw.

Any way, it gives me ideas of voltage readings for various positions of the dial, so when some book gives start figures of 19 Volts, wire feed at 300 in/min and current at 130 Amps, I have an idea of set-up to compare against. (Butt joint 1/8 steel)

Just under 5 on the Volts dial, set at 6 on the wire speed and go.

Cheers

Adrian

 

[normspanners]

Very handy test, thanks I have the r tech 180 and I am very impressed with it.
Norm

 

[AdrianH]

I am also very please with mine considering it has all been off a standard socket so far!

Adrian.

 

[normspanners]

I have done quite an amount of welding with mine off a 100 M extension OK 2.5mm arctic,( I usually use 4mm extension)
I was welding a landrover chassis, but hasnt seemed to object at all. Everything seemed quite stable no stuttering even when near on full throttle.

 

[The right]

 

[Kent]

turn the power up full turn the wire up full and work back in stages 1st wire then after you have spray arc work back to dip, record each setting. a 180 set will only go into spray at the top end with 0.8mm wire btw.
most try this working up thing rather than top down and find it much harder than it should be as a result. You learn nothing much reading a chart and its important to be able to recognise when you have done something daft or the feed has been knocked etc. etc
BTW we all say "frying bacon" but if your mig sounds like frying bacon then your doing something funny in your kitchen coz my bacon sounds nowt like welding for real

 

[Ho55]

Stephen i think you made an error, your feed rates must be m/min (not sec) in that table?
From the figures above, i get the following table:
Knob Setting Volts Feed (m/min)

Knob/V/Feed (m/min)
0 12 2
1 13 2.9
2 14.5 3.7
3 16 4.3
4 18 5.4
5 19.5 6.4
6 21.5 7.6
7 23 8.8
8 25 10
9 27 11.5
10 27.5 12

But i'm a bit puzzled what to do with the Amps knob. Its marked 'MMA Amps' so implying its not used for MIG/MAG, but the manual states that its can be used to fine tune in MIG/MAG but doesnt give details

And the above converted to R-Tech knob positions, with 0.8 wire (data from a Kemppi table) I get:

With 0.8 Wire
Material V (knob) Feed (knob)
0.5 mm 2 0
2 mm 2 ½ 1
1 mm 2 ¾ 2
1.5 mm 3 4
2 mm 3 ½ 6 ½
2.5 mm 4 8
3 mm 5 ½ 10

Does that sound right?