What kind of welder should I buy?

[cp1969]

A Lincoln "tombstone" 225 buzz box requires a 40 amp recepticle on 220v. I have mine running on a thirty amp circuit, simply because I am too, way too cheap to buy a 40 amp breaker.
David from jax

Just last week I went to Home Despot and walked out with a 50 amp breaker, a 50 amp outlet, a 1" metal sweep, a box, a box adapter, a cover plate, two conduit to box adapters, 10' of #6 wire and a 5 lb box of E6013. Total bill was something like $45.

My outlet is connected to the breaker panel via the 1" metal sweep, so I didn't have much expense in wire.

 

[sandman2234]

See, that just proves what I said! I said I was cheap!!!
Actually, the wheel that squeaks is the one that gets the oil, and the Lincoln doesn't mind the 30amp breaker it's on, so why do I want to change it? If I start welding and the breaker keeps kicking off from overload, I will be callling my friend who sells Square D stuff, and get him to send me a larger breaker. I do not think that people should trust a breaker to continously trip when an overload situation occurs. However, note that I did mention running the correct wire, not the undersize wire that a 30 amp would run on.
Thanks for pointing out just how cheap I really am, lol.
David from jax

 

[EddieWalker]

Guys, Thanks for all the informative replies. I've come to one conclusion - I'm going to install 220v! I'm getting ready to start building my woodshop/garage building. It will have several 200v outlets on the main level for the woodshop so dropping a few down to the tractor garage shouldn't be a problem. I'm glad I asked. EddieWalker said 220v and 30-50amps, is that right? That's some serious power at 220v. I would normally wire the 220v for 15 amps. What should I really plan for? The building will have 100 amp subpanel in it.

Couple of things in your reply have me scratching my head.

Do you have any experience or knowledge of household electicty? Most people don't, and I only understand the basice, so it's not a big deal.

In most homes, power comes off the transformer at 220 volts, 200 amps. It is split in half for 110 applications. The voltage itself isn't what's important. Amperage is where your power is at. Touching a 15 amp hot wire will give you a little buzz. It's very rare for that little amount to hurt a healthy person. 20 amps will wake you up, but it's still not leathal in most instances.

When we get up to 30 amps and above, it gets dangerous.

I've never heard of a 220 outlet at 15 amps. I guess it could exist, but why?

The main thing you must consider when determining wire size is how many amps you will run through it. The higher that amperage, the larger the wire you will need. The larger the wire, the more money it will cost you.

For a shop, you should use 12/2 wire for 110 volt, 20 amp outlets. 15 amps and 14/2 wire will be ok, but for power tools, you should really be at 20 amps and the thicker wire.

If you are unsure of the type of welder you will buy, then you should put in the heaviest wire you can afford. I have 8/3 in my wall for my welder. It works fine, but 6/3 would be even better. If you think you might buy a smaller welder and not need 50 amps, you can buy smaller/cheaper wire and use a lower amperage breaker.

This is pretty basic, but if it doesn't make sence to you, don't try to do it on your own. It's cheap money to hire a pro to come out one day to run the wires for you and hook it all up. Too many homes burn down every year from somebody doing it wrong and never having any idea until the house is on fire.

Eddie

 

[Loogie]

My house has 200 amp service as you described. I'm having the service upgraded to 400 amps with the construction of my new woodshop/garage. I was planning on running a 100 amp line out to the woodshop. Since it's a 1 man shop I don't use too many machines at once so 100 amps should be plenty. Most of my large machines - table saw, jointer, planer are all 110/220 machines. At 110 they draw over 15 amps and can throw 20 amp breakers during a startup spike. It works much better the wire them for 220 and the amperage gets cut in half so I can still wire a 15 amp circuit and not worry about overloading anything (does that make sense?) - and save a lot of $$ over using heavier wire. Obviously a welder is a whole 'nother story. I'll have to talk the electrical engineer about it some more to plan for the possibility. Thanks for the info!

 

[cp1969]

Couple of things in your reply have me scratching my head.

Touching a 15 amp hot wire will give you a little buzz. It's very rare for that little amount to hurt a healthy person. 20 amps will wake you up, but it's still not leathal in most instances.

When we get up to 30 amps and above, it gets dangerous.

I've never heard of a 220 outlet at 15 amps. I guess it could exist, but why?



This is pretty basic, but if it doesn't make sence to you, don't try to do it on your own. It's cheap money to hire a pro to come out one day to run the wires for you and hook it all up. Too many homes burn down every year from somebody doing it wrong and never having any idea until the house is on fire.

Eddie

I had to watch a safety film once that consisted of home video footage in which people accidentally filmed other people that got shocked. Pretty gruesome; in some some of the instances, it was fatal. One of the fatal instances was a teenage boy getting ready to vacuum the inside of his car with a shop vac. He'd just washed it on a concrete driveway. When he flipped the switch on the shopvac, he collapsed as if he'd been shot. Bare feet on wet concrete was the main problem. Another showed a young girl drying her hair in the bathroom and her brother started shooting video of her. When she noticed, she got mad and a minor scuffle ensued and she touched a faucet while holding the hair dryer and again, collapsed instantaneously.

The bottom line is, it can take as little as 100 milliamps to lock up the diaphragm and stop breathing. 15 amps is 15,000 milliamps. It all depends upon how it goes through you. If it only goes through one hand, yeah, you might just feel a tingle. But if it goes in one arm and out the other, you may be in big trouble. After I saw that film, I replaced as many regular outlets with GFCI's as I could.

edit: Didn't finish it the first time.

220v 15 amp outlets are used for things like window a/c units, etc. I've got one in my shed for the air compressor.

Eddie's last paragraph is good advice. If you don't understand what you're doing, leave it alone. Hiring an electrician might be the best money you never saved.

edit 2: 220v 15 amps lets you use 12/2 wire whereas if you wired it with 110v 30 amps you'd have to use 10 gauge wire.

 

[EddieWalker]

Thanks, I wasn't thinking of ways 15 amps could kill you, just working with it on homes and getting shocked from time to time. I've met more then one electician who works on home wireing hot so he can touch the wires to see which ones have power to them. I hate getting shocked, but figure it's just part of life.

Also, thanks for the info on the 220/ 15 amps lines. The more time I spend here, the more I learn.

Eddie

 

[gemini5362]

It depends on what you plan on fabbing, i.e. thicknesses involved and duty cycle, and how much money you want to spend.

110
The absolute most you can get out of a 110 MIG is 1/4" and that's if you preheat it and it's clean. It will weld sheet metal and up to 1/8 nicely.

220
Arc: Best bang for the buck is a Lincoln tombstone. Good for everything except light gauge sheet metal.

MIG: There are some nice units that will weld up to 1/2". Look for duty cycle and handy things like stitch settings.

110/220
Several companies, Miller and HTP for example, make Dual Voltage MIGs that will run on 110 and 220. Great portability, but guts when you need them.

I have one of the Miller DVI (dual voltage 220 or 110) machines I really like it.

 

[JB4310]

The bottom line is, it can take as little as 100 milliamps to lock up the diaphragm and stop breathing. 15 amps is 15,000 milliamps. It all depends upon how it goes through you. If it only goes through one hand, yeah, you might just feel a tingle. But if it goes in one arm and out the other, you may be in big trouble. After I saw that film, I replaced as many regular outlets with GFCI's as I could.

That's what I learned, only a tiny amount of current across the heart can kill, arm to arm, arm to foot etc. I've seen some electricians working with one arm behind their back like a catcher when poking around in a panel box.

" I've met more then one electician who works on home wireing hot so he can touch the wires to see which ones have power to them." What? maybe with a meter, I do that but not with bare hands, I have heard people say 110V is not bad, I've never been shocked surprisingly enough, but don't want to be.

 

[sandman2234]

When I decided to do something about the power in my garage, I looked at increasing the house load to 300 amp, and sending 150 of that capacity to the garage. Costs for the increase were out of sight, so I just went with a separate meter on the garage, with 200 amp service of it's own. I am really glad I did, so when I fire up my big welder, the wife doesn't get brownouts in the house. (It pulls 105 amps at max draw)
Adding a separate meter isn't easy here, but it sure was beat paying the higher prices for the "over 200" amp stuff. You have to have a separate address for each meter, so my garage has it's own address, power supply, phone line.
I kid a friend in Louisiana that I keep telling that his garage needs it's own zip code.
David from jax

 

[EddieWalker]

Instead of multiple meters, you can get bigger ones too. I have a 1,200 amp meter at my place. That's as big as you can go without going commercial and paying the really big bucks. The max that I could have gotten was 1,600 amps, but that was beyond me.

My big meter has six 200 amp breakers in it that I can run to 200 amp panels. Currently I'm only using 400 amps.

Eddie