Tig welding finger tip remote control.

[Dawai]

Fingertip remote control, for my miller it is $175. FOR A $10 pot???? I like the foot control for bench welding but?

Anybody done a home made mount? One on the back of a glove, or pendant? I am not sure I'd like the one mounted on the tig handle since I weld upside down tube.

http://www.metalmeet.com/photopost/data/500/medium/Miller_plug_connections.JPG

Anyone know where to purchase the round plug?

[davidh]

ill see if i have one in my stash . . . remind me tomorrow after lunch.
davidh

[Smokedaddy]

Interesting ...

[gnm109]

Fingertip remote control, for my miller it is $175. FOR A $10 pot???? I like the foot control for bench welding but?

Anybody done a home made mount? One on the back of a glove, or pendant? I am not sure I'd like the one mounted on the tig handle since I weld upside down tube.

http://www.metalmeet.com/photopost/data/500/medium/Miller_plug_connections.JPG

Anyone know where to purchase the round plug?


I think you could build one but as you may soon discover, there's more than just a pot. With a mother board inside of the typical Miller welder starting at around $500 bucks, it pays to be careful what you connect to your machine.

I made one for my former Lincoln 250/250 TIG/Stick. I reverse-engineered one from the foot pedal. If had a 10K ohm pot with one side up and one side down. The one in the foot pedal is 2 watts and they are a little hard to find locally, like at Radio Shack. I had to order mine. The real Lincoln and Miller units use slide pots and those can be gotten from places like Mouser. I used a rotary pot with a knob that I operated with my thumb but a slidepot would have been easier to use.

There are also two capacitors inside wired to protect the circuit from spikes. One is on each side of the potentioneter, although only one side of the potentiometer was used. At 10K ohms, the machine is at idle and, when the pedal is pressed, the start switch engages and further pressure on the pedal lowers the resistance to increase your welding current. The Lincoln had two 4700 mf caps at 3K volts on the potemtiometer, rather difficult to find without ordering them. I don't know if the Miller uses the same value of if they might already be inside the case on the Miller. I have to look at the Mller schematic. IIRC, they are a little harder to read than the Lincoln ones. I guess they don't want us working on them, you think?

The cable should be something like 25 feet of 16 ga. 6 conductor cable with an outer casing sturdy enough to last in the shop environment. The Lincoln used 5 of the 6 pins. It appears from your diagram that the Miller uses 6 out of a 14 pin connector. The Lincoln needed a 6 pin Amphenol connector with a clamp rear end. Those suckers are expensive!!!!!

An independent welder repair shop that I know has all of the parts that I would need to make one for my Syncrowave 200 and I'll probably build one once I get over there to get the parts. I agree the new ones for Miller are quite expensive.

I see them on eBay from time to time but it usually gets out of my price range. I'm not poor but I don't want to pay near new prices for a gizmo that I could make. I guess that a Miller dealer could order the 14 pin plug for you. There was also a microswitch in the Lincoln footpedal. I used a very small one for my homemade Lincoln hand unit. It only controls a signal current so it doesn't need a large electrical capacity.

When I build the one for my Miller, I can use the parts for the one I already built for the Lincoln. Probably all I really need at this point is the connecter and some research as to the values that the Miller needs. Got to be careful, as I say. Don't want to make any smoke........

To answer your question, I tied my control to the torch with some small tie wraps. The parts were fitted into a piece of ABS tubing and it was a little too bulky and I intended to re-package it when I traded the machine in for my Miller 200 SW. With the type of welding you're doing, it might pay you build your own so that you can package it advantageously for your operation. Maybe you could put it underneath the torch, like a MIG trigger.

If you already know all of this stuff, please forgive. I like to type...especially on Sunday night. LOL

Hopefully, if you do decide to build one, you can source the parts inexpensively. Unfortnately, with the price of gasoline and shipping nowadays, it's getting really bad. At $4.16 a gallon, I have begun to use the internet more and more looking for shipping deals and so far, it's working OK.

I had to pay $6.95 shipping to get a small bag of 10 X 20 mm set screws from McMaster-Carr last week for some of my Asian BXA toolholders last week! On the other hand, there weren't any locally in town, anywhere and If I had to drive 30 or 40 miles, there goes $10 or more in gas.

I'm really glad that the management here made the decision to add a welding section here. I love to weld and do my machine work at home.

Happy Trails! ;)

[Dawai]

Don't want to make any smoke........

No kidding, I bought a com cable for a plc, it put the plc into error mode, and the serial port on the pc fried.

NOT from Allen bradley.. of course I have not investigated yet, I did get the slc cpu checked out. As with most salesmen, they didn't care if it worked, they just wanted to sell it.

[davidh]

ill see if i have one in my stash . . . remind me tomorrow after lunch.
davidh



sorry david, didn;t see one in the pile. . . . .

[apd855]

I have one if you want it, just pay shipping. It velcros to the torch, I hate the thing.

[JDF]

David,

I think I have a Miller finger control around. My tools are scattered over a fair portion of middle TN, but I'll see if I can find it. Price of shipping if you want it. I don't have a welder at the moment, and honestly couldn't stand the thing anyway.

Jeff

[piniongear]

Two guys offering to give away torch controls for the price of shipping within 2 minutes of each other?
I'd like to get one of those myself. A slider would be nice........pg

[macona]

Yeah, the hand control is pretty much just a 10k pot. Though it is a custom pot with switch on a circuit board with a couple filter caps all wrapped up in a molded case with a molded . Added to this is 30' of cord with a $50 connector on the end.

It all adds up. And in the end if you made one it wouldnt still be nearly as nice to use.

They just are not manufactured in quantities high enough to get the prices down.

I still dont like hand controls though...

[gnm109]

Yeah, the hand control is pretty much just a 10k pot. Though it is a custom pot with switch on a circuit board with a couple filter caps all wrapped up in a molded case with a molded . Added to this is 30' of cord with a $50 connector on the end.

It all adds up. And in the end if you made one it wouldnt still be nearly as nice to use.

They just are not manufactured in quantities high enough to get the prices down.

I still dont like hand controls though...


I sort of agree. I tried one for a while and I later got an OEM Lincoln one and found that I actually do better with the foot pedal.

By the way, if anyone wants parts and cables, they are available from Arc Zone. I noticed that they sell replacement foot pedals for both Miller and Lincoln and they are the same unit with different panel connectors. That means that the Miller will also use a 10K pot and the two 4700 capacitors and microswitch that the Lincoln uses.

I suspect that the parts aren't cheap, however.

[gunsmither]

A friend has one on his Miller tig. I tried it out, but did not like it. Way to clumsy and bulky in my view.

[macona]

Where hand controls shine is where you cant stand or sit to use a foot pedal. Like when I was patching a friends exhaust pipe. Worked great then.

Different companies use different resistances. Lincoln seems to like 2k, Esab 5k, and Miller 10k. They all work identically. One end of the pot to 0v, other end to 10v and the wiper back to the machine. This creates a variable voltage divider and thats what sets the current.

The lincoln, esab, and thermal arc pedals all use a common 2" long 1/4" shaft pot. The newer composite miller one uses a special pot with a molded timing belt gear on the shaft. They are about $70 from miller. May sound expensive but their system allows me to change a bad pot with nothing more than a 1/4" nutdriver in about 2 minutes. With the other you will need a soldering iron, allen wrenches and about 20 mins to 1/2 hour.

[Dawai]

The way the drawing shows on the miller drawing?

THE pot is a voltage divider.. it has +10 on one side, 0 on the other.. sweeping the wiper or pickup control signal out picks up +10 to 0 volts according to position.. the amount of the pot just determines the load placed upon the supply.

NOW the capacitors, they must be load stabilizers since most small pots are rattly.. they arc and throw erratic voltages as the wiper sweeps the coiled wire inside the pot. Watching a pot as it sweeps and turns on a scope is a ragged saw pattern.. Remember the old radios that were crackly as you altered the volume?

SO, a 3k will load up the supply more than the 5k but have the same 0-10 volts across the sweep.. OK?

I'm actually thinking it needs to be operated by the off hand.. not the one grasping the torch.

Of course, I am not being true to my nature, I'd have taken mine apart by now to see how it worked for sure to reverse engineer it. I been sick.

HEY, them Oregon boys think just like us Gawgia boys.. just read it there.. good deal..
One more note: in after thought... the on face knob is a two channel encoder, not a pot at all.. it must go to a cpu in there somewheres... they are actually more reliable in a dirty enviroment.. good..

[macona]

Nope. You gots it all wrong!

The machine bases its output on the voltage present at the wiper. In millers case it is pin C on the remote connection. 0 volts is minumum output. 10 volts is maximum output.

The filter caps are there to keep as much HF out of the electronics as possible. There are more filters at the panel. Miller has a special amphenol with filter caps and bead ferrites built in the connector on newer models, on older one there are disc caps attached to the pins on the inside of the machine. There is addition filtering on the control board as well. 30' of wire running along the tig power lead makes for a pretty good antenna.

Depending on the machine they may use a pot or an encoder, Most of the inverters use encoders, most other machines use sealed pots. The pots used are carbon comp pots so there is very little noise.

Older machines used a completely different current control scheme and the rheostat is wirewound and dissipates quite a bit of heat.

Really, you can use any pot over about 5k on any machine. As long as the machine sees it 0-10 volts at the reference pin and you are not pulling too much current out of the reference voltage supply it will work. Once I had a Miller Maxstar 140STR. It had a remote connection only when you connected a remote it ignored the panel pot so you couldnt set max current like other machine. So I made an interface between the pedal that set a maximum voltage for a full press of the pedal with a small pot on the interface box. Worked great!

The controls are intended to be strapped to the torch handle. How else would you hold filler rod. The miller controls come with little velcro straps. CK makes some controls with the control integrated into the torch handle.

FWIW, I am an Certified Miller Tech.

[piniongear]

FWIW, I am an Certified Miller Tech.

Thanks for adding that line Macona. I was beginning to wonder...How does this guy know so much? :D
pg

[gnm109]

The older Lincolns uee a 10K pot and some of the later ones use 5K. As mentioned, it's not all that critical ecept it probably pays to use whatever your particular machines uses in its foot pedal if you are going to build a hand control.

The capacitors are not available at Radio Shack. The ones I used are Vishay brand that I bought from Newark online. Their SKU number is 46F5283 and the manufacturer number is 30GAD47. They're about $1.00 apiece. They are quite necessary to protect your electronic guttyworks. Yopu wll need at least a 2 watt pot as well.

I do have a Ham license and I've been fooling with electronics for a long time but not professionally. As far as certification, my wife tells me that I'm a certified ******* so that should be enough to establish my credentials. ;)

[ckalley]

David-
If memory serves me, the Miller's use an AMP CPC connector. You can get them from Newark or Digi-Key.

Craig

[macona]

Millers use Amphenol 14 pins on their remote connections. They sell a molded plastic version that they use on most of their new stuff. Little bit cheaper than the metal shelled versions.

Thermal Arc uses Amp CPCs (8 pin) on some of their inverters for the foot pedal.

[speedy]

Where hand controls shine is where you cant stand or sit to use a foot pedal. Like when I was patching a friends exhaust pipe. Worked great then.

Yes, I can see where hand controls would be useful. When the legs/feet dont function too well.

[wierdscience]

Yes, I can see where hand controls would be useful. When the legs/feet dont function too well.


I recently had that problem.I had to weld up a 25x33' stainless mesh screen by joining 5 6' wide sections.4,000+ tig welds laying on my stomach in .080" wire.

I had the Miller hand control,it worked out okay,but the on detent is way to stiff.It takes two hands to operate.I would much rather a slide pot.