Amperage or 2ndry gas

[bigals]

Hi all,
I would like to have a better understanding of the relationship between amps and 2ndry gas changes to increase or decrease voltage. Is one option more prefered/desireable and under what circumstance would you choose one over the other. Thanks

Bigals

[Gordon]

Hi Bigals

If I understand you correctly, there two ways of looking at this

* Keeping power level (kW) constant while changing current (A) and voltage (V, via gas flow/mix/nozzle). Increasing one requires a balanced decrease in the other to retain desired power level.

* Keeping current (A) or voltage (V) constant and changing the other to achieve different power levels.

My preferred way of working is to hold current constant and have gas flows/ gas mix and nozzle selection as variables. A plasma system like Metco 3/7/9MB is quite capable of spraying the vast majority of materials at 500A keeping within 40KW. If I can't achieve my goal, then using current (A) also as a variable becomes useful for expanding the envelope and achieving higher power levels. Argon only parameters (by its nature a low voltage plasma) require high current to achieve reasonable power levels to be useful.

That's not to say you can't develop say low current, high voltage parameters to deliver much the same thing as high current, low voltage parameters. It gets complicated and as with many things there are many different routes to achieve a similar outcome.