Lorch S8

[Welderpaul]

We recently purchased a Lorch S8 from Matt1978. Its a 500 amp job, with Speed Up, Speed Arc and Speed Pulse software installed. Nice machine. Speed Arc and Speed Up are the two settings that are most used. Speed Up is very impressive, allowing you to do a vertical-up weld without having to do the traditional Xmas tree weave. Its almost the same motion as a vertical-down, the welding set does the rest for you. The machine has dramatically reduced welding time, and clean up time. Produces neat and tidy spatter-free welds eliminating post weld clean up. There is no need on this machine to set volts and wire speed (and messing about testing your settings before welding). Simply tell it what mode you want, what gas, what wire size and what thickness you are welding and the machine sets itself up. The settings can be fine tuned by the operator to suit personal preference. A nice touch is the Powermaster torch. The settings can be controlled from the torch to save going back to the machine each time you change position or material thickness.
This pallet of beams was welded-up in 1 hour dead. With a transformer type machine it would have taken nearer 2 hours.
Yer need to watch for bare patches of skin. Seems a much more intense arc - lots of red patches where the light has crept in The settings seem top end for power. Not a problem to me as i like to weld as hot as i can
This is probably not the best sales pitch, and i'm not as good a salesman as Matt, but all the same, a real nice machine. Matt demo'd the machine and spent a good while here showing everyone what it could do. Makes the difference. The novelty of being able to pre-programme settings and name them seems to be wearing off thank god. Each welder can have their own menu with different job names in. Every time i come to use it though the language is always in Polish.
I forgot to take a picture of the earth clamp. Seriously over engineered. Its massive. Takes two hands to open it; it could probably cope with 1000a through it. Can't clamp it to anything delicate - it would crush it

 

[wyn]

Nice looking machine, Paul. Does that "flap" looking bit come down to cover the display ?

 

[scarecrow]

this is a video of one in action is the last bit on the video is the vertical which is very impressive http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-DTeyJNOxE&feature=related

 

[Welderpaul]

Yeah, the flap covers the screen once evrythings set.

Those noises all sound familiar on the vid.

 

[Barney1973]

I use a Fronius synergic welder at work,doesn't have all the gizmos on the Lorch but does produce some great welds,as you say no spatter and it does seem to be a stronger arc as I found out when I first used it,all exposed skin was red raw after a day,

 

[madkayaker]

the clamp is huge! having seen the welds it well worth it

 

[matt1978]

Glad your getting on well with your new purchase Paul. Thanks once again for the business, we really appreciate it!

Re the arc intensity, Pulse and versions of, are more intense because of the Peak currents involved, so make sure you wear adequate gloves and overalls, but providing you wear welding gloves and overalls you will be fine. (I wear Tig Gloves for demoing Pulse mig) You should notice that there is less fume produced however.

Re the Speed, Steve (From Engweld) called me today, he sold a sep feeder machine the simerla to yours to another customer earlier this month, who welds up big lifting assemblies, the customer recons that they are saving 4 hours per day, using the processes! He is going to order another in October

 

[scarecrow]

I'm not surprised as there must be more than 40' of weld and Paul pallet

 

[zst]

Speed Up is very impressive, allowing you to do a vertical-up weld without having to do the traditional Xmas tree weave.

What is SPEED-UP? Welding uphill in spray mode or in Short Circuit transfer?

 

[matt1978]

What is SPEED-UP? Welding uphill in spray mode or in Short Circuit transfer?

Its a combination of SpeedPulse and SpeedArc, SpeedPulse is what gives the penetration and the you have a cooling phase which makes the pool more controllable. You can see a video

 

[zst]

those "speed..." functions seem to exist only at Lorch... I have not seen anything similar at major players. It is question whether they are necessary.

- Speedpulse: We use pulse only for thin aluminium and for cladding bronze onto the steel... Low heat input with proper penetration and spatter-free welding is more important than speed.
- Speedarc seems to be excellent... Maybe to reach productivity with common CO2 wire that we reach now with expensive metal cored wires...
- Speed up: we use rutile flux cored wires in 1.0 mm for thinner plates and 1.2 mm for thicker ones in vertical-up welding. It should be compared if SpeedUp with common CO2 wire could be alternative in productivity/penetration/total cost to rutile flux cored wire in uphill welding.

Are there any comparison and analysis with details?

 

[matt1978]

- Speedpulse: We use pulse only for thin aluminium and for cladding bronze onto the steel... Low heat input with proper penetration and spatter-free welding is more important than speed.

Pulse has many advantages on most materials, including Steel and CrNi. However, it is considered a slower process, especially when compared against Spray arc on Steel, SpeedPulse is up to 48% faster than conventional Pulse on Steel but while still offering the same advantages than conventional Pulse.

- Speedarc seems to be excellent... Maybe to reach productivity with common CO2 wire that we reach now with expensive metal cored wires...

SpeedArc is a modified Spray arc and offers a much more focused Arc plasma, which leads to a higher penetration level.

- Speed up: we use rutile flux cored wires in 1.0 mm for thinner plates and 1.2 mm for thicker ones in vertical-up welding. It should be compared if SpeedUp with common CO2 wire could be alternative in productivity/penetration/total cost to rutile flux cored wire in uphill welding.

SpeedUp is atleast x2 as fast as conventional solid wire verticle welding, but its main purpose is the reduction of the skill level required from the operator. Its not necesserily as fast as Rutile welding, but the required skill level is the same and the solid wire consumables are generally much cheaper and there is less fume, which is better for the operator.

Here are some pictures of penetration for SpeedArc and SpeedPulse. Also, you can achieve much better visual appearance colour wise on CrNi due to the increased travel speeds and inturn lower heat inputs.

 

[zst]

Well, I consider to ship our old S3 to Germany for check-up and maybe upgrading but the machine is always busy. We cannot live without it couple weeks...

Please let me know more about penetration with Speed Up. When we weld plates with thickness less than 3 mm we go downhill in short circuit mode with common CO2 wire. If the plates are thicker, this mode is cold. We do not like christmas tree weaving, straight pushing uphill is difficult to control, therefore, for thicker plates we use rutile flux cored wires and result is excellent. So my question is whether Speed up make enough penetration at thicker plates (over 3 mm)? Also how does Speed Up make root at upward welding of open butt joints?

 

[madkayaker]

paul showed me a 25mm plate welded with the machine uphill if that helps and it looked perfect

 

[zst]

These macros for SpeedArc are impressive, I would be glad to see one made by SpeedUp at plates over 5 mm thick...