"Good welding is the bottom line--it helps give the product its shape," says Greg Hayward, RD technician, Lloyd/Flanders Industries, Inc., Menominee, MI. "Good welds are also the cornerstone of durable wicker furniture." To guarantee quality on the thin-wall 3000-series aluminum tubing that forms the backbone of its wicker furniture, Lloyd/Flanders must weld using the pulsed gas-metal-arcwelding (GMAW) process. However, the high-production push-pull pulsing systems used on its manufacturing lines do not make good sense for the RD department. They are complicated and time-consuming to fine-tune when switching between material thicknesses, costly, take up a lot of space and are so heavy as to render them immobile. That's why Lloyd Flanders' RD department agreed to test a new all-in-one pulsed GMAW system, a Millermatic from Miller Electric Mfg. Co., Appleton, WI. The Millermatic Pulser provides pulsed GMAW capabilities on aluminum, welds steel like a conventional Millermatic unit, sets up for pulsed GMAW almost as simply as for conventional GMAW, is the size of a conventional 200-amp unit and wheels around on casters.
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