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Picked up today. It's a lot bigger than I expected it to be, but considering its a 30-180 A semi professional setup, with a big beefy transformer, I shouldn't have been too surprised.
Now all I need to do is get some gas, and start following the tutorials on the mig welding forum.
Oh and get on and build my shed, to house my lathe and to give some where for the welder to live out of vikkis way. The garage is starting to resemble Steptoe's Yard...
Picked up today. It's a lot bigger than I expected it to be, but considering its a 30-180 A semi professional setup, with a big beefy transformer, I shouldn't have been too surprised.
Now all I need to do is get some gas, and start following the tutorials on the mig welding forum.
Oh and get on and build my shed, to house my lathe and to give some where for the welder to live out of vikkis way. The garage is starting to resemble Steptoe's Yard...
HARRROOOOLLLLD!
Try to make sure that you run it off off a decent leccy supply. When I added the electrics to my new "shed" I found that the garage was fed with a 4mm cable - only OK for very short distances. It's suprising how quickly the voltage drops if you have a poor supply.
I noticed that the wender has a conventional 13A plug on it. This is actually not up to the job if it is a true 180 amp welder. Most welders operate at 24V as I remember which for 180 amps means sucking at least 18A (not allowing for transformer losses). You want one of those blue industrial thingies (technical term) which are good for 25A as I recall, and ideally with a dedicated feed to the main distribution box.
Try to make sure that you run it off off a decent leccy supply. When I added the electrics to my new "shed" I found that the garage was fed with a 4mm cable - only OK for very short distances. It's suprising how quickly the voltage drops if you have a poor supply.
I noticed that the wender has a conventional 13A plug on it. This is actually not up to the job if it is a true 180 amp welder. Most welders operate at 24V as I remember which for 180 amps means sucking at least 18A (not allowing for transformer losses). You want one of those blue industrial thingies (technical term) which are good for 25A as I recall, and ideally with a dedicated feed to the main distribution box.
Robin
So if half of Northampton goes off the electricity grid tonight we'll know what Jason has been up to.......!
I noticed that the wender has a conventional 13A plug on it. This is actually not up to the job if it is a true 180 amp welder. Most welders operate at 24V as I remember which for 180 amps means sucking at least 18A (not allowing for transformer losses).
It won't operate at just one output voltage though and will draw much less current at the lower end of the voltage range. Coincidentally, I Just took delivery of a MIG welder myself last week. Mine needs a 25A supply at the top end of its range but since it has 12 voltage settings it'll work just fine with a conventional 13A plug as long as I don't run it above setting 6 or 7 of the 12 (and that's good enough for ~5mm mild steel). That's certainly the received wisdom from browsing www.mig-welding.co.uk and borne out by my weekend testing.
MartinClan wrote:
You want one of those blue industrial thingies (technical term) which are good for 25A as I recall, and ideally with a dedicated feed to the main distribution box.
IP-something or other? Blue is single phase and available in 16A or 32A variants. I'm planning/just starting a garage-to-workshop conversion at the moment and I'll be getting a spark in to fit a new consumer unit in due course. I'll be doing as you suggest and having a dedicated feed for the welder, almost certainly going to an industrial socket.
