Technical paper · September 2026
Synergic Is Not Automatic
Synergic control is a library of settings held in the machine’s memory, built from wire type, wire size and shielding gas, that somebody measured once. You set the amps. The machine looks up the volts. Trim is the quarter turn you give it when the job in front of you is not the job the curve was measured on.
Graham Fry
Welder
International Welding Engineer
13 pages, 24 references, four figures
What the paper covers
Synergic is sold as the machine doing the thinking. It is not. It is a lookup table, and a lookup table only knows the three things it was built from. It does not know your stick-out, your joint, your plate temperature, the length of your leads or the state of your liner. Every one of those moves the arc away from the point the curve was measured at, and trim is how you put it back.
The paper works that through properly: what a synergic line actually is, how the four calibration points and the interpolation between them behave, why the displayed amps and volts are not the numbers a WPS can be written against, and what happens when you borrow an argon mix program to run CO2. It closes with the fault-to-cause table and the business case, costed.
- Where the word synergic comes from, and the machines it came from
- What the curve actually is, and what trim does to it
- Worked example: 1.2 mm solid wire in CO2, and one reach into a joint
- What the curve cannot see
- Why the displayed numbers are not the numbers
- What a WPS has to carry, and what breaks when it does not
- Fault to cause, cheapest check first
- Standards and editions, exactly as cited
Read the paper
The full paper, and a two page summary if you want the argument before you commit to the whole thing.
Synergic Is Not Automatic
The full technical paper. Synergic lines, trim, the four calibration points, meter accuracy against AS 1674.2 and ISO 17662, the CO2 case, and what a compliant WPS has to carry.
Two page summary
The argument, the worked example and Figure 1 on two pages. Written to be read standing up.
The working version of this material, with the live synergic line tool, the figures and the A2 shop floor guide you can print for the workshop, sits at Synergic MIG and what trim really means. Background on why a GMAW machine has no amps knob is in Volts, amps and the self-adjusting arc. Back to all publications.