Ideal Welder?

I am new to welding and am taking the Practical TIG Welding course now. On the chapter that discusses welder settings, it reviews 2T and 4T settings and also Pre Flow with Start Amps and Upslope. I purchased the Lincoln Electric Square Wave® TIG 200 TIG Welder. Unless I'm missing something, this unit does not seem to have these settings. https://www.lincolnelectric.com/en/products/k5126-1

Did I choose poorly? Can I make this unit work, or should I look into an alternate welder? Thanks!

Looking through the manuals, I can't find mention of them, either - they may fall into the "nice to have but not needed" for more advanced welders, like the "4T" option.

With the extensive experience Lincoln have, and the algorithms they've developed, I would expect they have the defaults pretty much on the button already - and for beginners they're a few things less to mess up.

The features you mentioned are common on 95% of machines so makes sence to note them in the course but they aren't really needed for most of us imo.

4t would be a handy feature for industrial pipe welding where you might be running beads for long periods of time but not something I would ever use. Upslope and start amps I have yet to use, might come in handy one day when using the 2t but 99% of the time, personally, I prefer to use the pedal which makes those settings redundant.

Pre flow is weird not to have though, does it have post flow? It no doubt has presets Lincoln has programmed in but I do like to minimise pre flow whenever I can just coz I like instant arc starts and hate waiting unless I actually need to flood the area. You can get a high pressure burst of argon that will destabilise the arc however so more stuff to factor in.

All in all I'd say it's a good machine to learn on, like gord said, less stuff to mess up!

Hi Neil, apologies for the slow reply. It's not a machine I've used but I don't see any issues with the functionality of your unit. As Anders mentioned, it's not a deal breaker and some of the features we discuss in the course won't be included in every machine and also may not be adjustments you find necessary. Most machines tend to dumb down some of the settings so you just need to select for example AC or DC and the rest of the settings will be whatever Lincoln have decided are good baseline values for that style of welding. Pre flow of shielding gas would be an essential element for any DC welding on reactive materials like stainless or titanium so my guess is that the settings will include pre flow but it just isn't adjustable.

This may be of interest to you - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBGW38hu7TY

your foot pedal would be your 4T function. you can control your upslope and downslope with your foot pedal.

if you disconnect your foot pedal you might find it has a scratch start.

from what I can tell there is no button on the hand piece to give you a latching function or high frequency start.