Jeff Loffert A fellow Alaskan! I suggest going with the 30a rather than the 15a. If you ever use it on an engine drive welder, 30' isn't as long as it seems it should be. Or if you poke it outside a garage door or something, 15' is short. The other advantage of the 30a is if the cord ever gets damaged, a guy has extra cable there to be able to chop down and repair and still have a chance at leaving some length.

That machine has the benefit of not needing the wire feeder ($$$) to use the push pull setup, but that comes with the extra hassle of swapping the spools for sure. A spoolmatic 30a is around $2000 (15a is shorter aand a few hundred less.), the XR-alumapro lite push pull gun is around $2500. So the spool gun is also the cheaper option. My experience tells me that the spool gun is often the best place to start. I also look at it this way...If I have a spool gun, I may be able to go out and do a job I couldn't have before, and sometimes one off jobs are more than enough to completely pay for assets for that job (like an engine drive welder you can run the spool gun off of...for example) that now allow you to do more of that work in the future.

On that machine you can utilize the pulse features with the 30a spool gun like mine, as well. You won't need that control box I showed on the end of my spool gun either, it is a direct hookup to your machine with the 10 pin cord.

😬😬

I have been wanting to try this.

That's some Alaska iron seasoning right there. Extra spicy.

Sam especially the ones that seem like they will be 😂

I have one and have not experienced that at all. Batteries old?

This is typical of spool guns. They will normally not use the wire feed speed on the machine and use only the speed control on the gun. On push pull setups, they use both the feed rolls on the machine and the feed rolls on the gun and they push the wire all the way from the machine, unlike the spool gun just using those little 4" spools. You can get a good idea of ipm of wire by cutting the wire flush to the nozzle and setting a timer to 6 or 10 seconds. Then at the same time as you pull the trigger, start the timer and let the trigger go as soon as the timer is up. Then measure the wire that came out from the edge of the nozzle. Multiply that length by 6 if you fed wire for 10 seconds, or by 10 if you fed wire for 6 seconds. That number will be your inches per minute. Once you get used to how your spool gun runs, you will likely just pay more attention to the dial on the gun and just know where to start, rather than be worried by ipm. But this is a good way to be able to know where your spool gun actually is in ipm.

I use aluminum bronze and silicon bronze quite a bit.

It's possible. Sometimes I do with bronze.