Arccaptain Welder Settings Explained ( So Your Welds Stop Sucking )

If your R Captain welds look rough, it's not the machine, it's the settings. I'll show you how I run mine in under 10 minutes. Let's go ahead and power the machine on. Power button in the back. So, we're going to let the machine power on. The fan's going to run for not long. A little bit, 30 seconds, maybe. And uh we'll talk about some of these settings here. So, first of all, right off the gate, you have 220 or 110. What you're plugged into, it's going to tell you right here. So, I'm plugged into 220. Next, you have your mode. Your mode is going to set your different welding processes. So, MIG, stick, TIG, spool, and MIG. We're going to keep it in MIG. This button right here is your MIG operation. So, pulse 2T, 4T. Basically, 2T, you're going to pull the trigger, hold it down, let go, stops welding. 4T, you're going to pull the trigger, let go, and it's going to continue welding until you pull that trigger again. And then pulse. Just now we put the machine in synergy or synergetic mode. When it's in synergic mode, this is how you can change your wire sizes. So, Meg, 40, 23, 30, and 35. So, we're going to be running it in 35. And this one is different gases. So, right now, you have your FE mix, which is your 2080 or 2575 argon CO2. You have your flux, which is straight flux. Now note that when you run flux, you're limited on your wire size. So it's not going to give you that 2 three. Next, you have 98% argon, 2% CO2. This is for your aluminum, 100% argon. This is just 100% CO2. And then you're back at your mix, your 8020 or your 7525, whatever. All right. So, that's the basic gist of what these buttons do, right? So, now we're going to talk about your volts and your amps. So, when you're in synergy mode, your MIG, your wire size, and your gas is all calculated to give you this preset number by our captain. Right now, you do have some adjustment on your volts. You can go up three and you can go down three. So if I turn this, I'm going negative one. So that's going to go to 16.7 and -2 15.7. So if I bring this up to two, remember our preset was 17, so it should put me at 19 19.7, right? So, we're going to set this back at zero cuz that's what it was at. And now you have your amps. You can set your amps really wherever you want up. It's just going to continue to move your volts up. So, you only got to worry about really your amp dial. 250 amps. MP 205 and it's going to set your volts automatically for you. Wire type running 70S6 V-groove DC positive argon CO2 mixture 17 to 25 CFH on our regulator. We're running 035 wire. Now, this is where I think stuff gets a little weird. then I don't really like to follow it. But if we just go 8 gauge material thickness 8 gauge, it's telling us to run at 21.3 volts, 452 in per minute. That seems high to me. So you guys can go off of this chart and just set it up on your machine to how that chart is on the side or find a Google calculator or the Miller app or something and set it off of that and make sure you run practice beads before you do it. All right, so I cut up some quarter inch plate. So let's go see what the machine says to run for quarter inch. So 1/4 in converts to 6 something mm. This wants us to run 28 vol 600 in per minute for 5 mm thickness. Let's give this a try and see how it goes. All right. So a couple things before you even start welding. One, make sure your material is clean. Get rid of all the mill scale. Mill scale is like it's that dark color stuff on top of your steel. Get rid of your mill scale. Clean up your edges. These are not the best, but clean up your edges. Bevel if you have to. Like if I was going to run this, I would bevel it. Run my route and then run two um overlays over the top. But I'm just going to do a T- joint. We'll run it like this. Um, another important thing to do is your wires stick out. What I like to do is I like to just take my welpers here, put it at the tip, and then whatever that stick out is is the depth of here. So, yeah, those are two things to start. Make sure you have a ground clamp. I'm grounding to the table. It's probably best to ground to your piece, but for this demonstration, the table will work fine. All right. So, I just went ahead and tacked these in. Now, let's run a bead. I want to be pushing instead of pulling. I want that gas shooting out in front of me. Let's go ahead and run a bead on here and see how it sounds. You should be listening to like a hissing noise. Like a not really hissing, like a crackling bacon type sound. That's hot. That's hot and fast. That's with the arc captain settings. All right. So, now we're running the Miller settings. Here are the Miller settings. Amperage range 180 190 21 to 22 volts. We're doing quarter inch plate. And what's cool about this machine is if you go to adjust your amps, it adjusts your volts as well. So it wants us to do So the Miller app says 21 to 22 volts. That puts us at about 196 amps. So you're not far off from what the what the Miller app is saying. So let's put it at this setting. Let's weld with it and uh see how that turns out versus our 600 inches per minute. I'm going to go ahead and run this gap so you guys can hear with the Miller settings and then I'm going to run this gap here with my settings. What I like to do. Do you hear that? More of a sizzling sound. So, that's how that is supposed to look. And I got nozzle gel on there, too. So, that's that's pretty good. That's what I like to see. Now, I'm going to turn up a little bit. I like to burn a little bit hotter. So, I'm going to go up a little bit on my amps. And I'm probably going to go to like 210, 215, and we'll burn it. So, we ran the R Captain settings. We ran the Miller settings. Now, this is what I like to do. 22.2 volts, 215 amps. 409 in per minute. Let's run it. I think that one sounds good. Looks good. You guys can correct me in the comments if I'm wrong, but those are the settings I like to run. So, that was our So, this is what this is the arc captain settings right here. That's not a bad bead, actually. I just feel like we're burning way too hot. This is the Miller settings here. And these are my settings that I like to run. I like to run a little bit hotter than Miller. I would maybe even go up to 220 230 pushing that 450 500 inches per minute. So let's go ahead and run some 8 in. Now we're working with 280 to 300 in per minute 18 to 19 volts 450 450 140 to 150 amps. So 8 in is about 3 mm. So right here we'll go to 035 360 in per minute 19.7. That's not horrible. Um we might have to bump it up to that. We'll see how it goes. It just seems that this chart runs a little hot for what you actually need. All right. Now this is the kind of stuff that you guys are probably going to be doing at home. So, this this was just an old trailer frame that I had laying around and I cut up. Um I did build the rest of the trailer, but this is old metal. This is something you're going to find on a trailer frame or um some hobby stuff. It's 8 in. I beveled it ever so slightly. So, let's go ahead and let's run a route down the middle of here and see how this welds. I like the sound of that. Sounded good. It laid down really well. Really nice and flat right in the middle there. I don't know if you guys can see that or not, but it laid down really well. Filled that root in nice. Definitely got penetration on the back side. Yeah, I think that that welded that eighth inch nicely. That was at 18 volts, 150 amps. And uh I'm happy with that. That would smooth out nicely if you're doing like a frame or or auto body or something. This is 8 in, but it's old, shitty, dirty in it welded it perfectly. All right, so we ran quarter inch. We ran 8 inch with the Arc Captain MP 250. Um, again, like I I think I said this in my last video of the Arc Captain, the settings on the table just do not make sense to me whatsoever. Like 600 in per minute, 28 volts is crazy. Yeah, sure. The bead looked I guess it looked nice. It like it laid super flat in there. like it laid flat, but I think you could turn that down to like 500 450. Um 8 inch was perfect. Um I didn't follow the table on the arc captain. I used the Miller Miller app. So yeah, that's how I get it. Miller app. That's that's my cheat way of doing it. Um, even for eighth inch when I set the Miller app, like in the synergy mode on the Arc Captain, I set my amps and my volts followed and then I changed it over to inches per minute and my inches per minute followed as well. And it was almost identical to what the Miller app told me. Like, so the R Captain has it it's got it set to that. like it's got it the volts and amps and inches per minute are all set within that app kind of but the table on the side and correct me if I'm wrong please but the table on the side doesn't show that like it should and I wish it was in inches and not millimeters so I'm not sponsored by Arc Captain sponsored by Miller not sponsored by anybody if you guys want more videos on this stuff more tools more whatever Hit the subscribe button down below. I got to do. I'm out of here.