Looking for a place to weld

[ccbruin]

I need a place with 220v to weld. Preferably in/near Boulder. My house doesn't have 220 in the garage and I don't want to deal with the landlord.

Thanks in advance!

Alec

[Woodscaper]

If your dryer plug is anywhere near your garage door, you can always make an extension cord of sorts to get it into the garage. Make sure to use heavy gauge wire and a 50 amp plug tho. I did this for a year or so before wiring the garage.

[ccbruin]

I live in a duplex, and the garage is on the other side of the house unfortunately.

[Woodscaper]

Yeah, that would be a lot of wire and that big stuff is not cheap!

[Dutch]

I'm in Firestone and have a 220 welder. How much welding are you talking about?

[carpenle]

I am in Thornton and have 220 in the garage.

[ccbruin]

Hey guys, I might be able to snag from power from the neighbors dryer outlet. This is the dryer plug: Doesn't look like the standard 220v on a welder. What can I do?

http://i843.photobucket.com/albums/zz351/ccbruin3/2C5C3C49-5EB5-4031-93C6-6B67E062549D_zpselycl0yc.jpg (http://s843.photobucket.com/user/ccbruin3/media/2C5C3C49-5EB5-4031-93C6-6B67E062549D_zpselycl0yc.jpg.html)

[Hypoid]

Go to the hardware store and buy a plug to match.

Edit: It might be a plug, or a cable with a plug. The outlet you have in the picture is an older style 220V, 50A receptacle.

[ccbruin]

I am looking to make an extension cord, it would be around 100'. I've looked around on the internet and found it's not too hard to buy 100' of 10/3 cord and buy the proper plug for each side. Has anyone done this?

[Hypoid]

I went to school for this kind of thing...

Post the electrical ratings on your equipment, or even a picture of the electrical ratings.

A 100 foot run of 30 amp wire sounds light to me. The voltage drop formula, using the rated amperage draw, will give a better answer.

http://www.calculator.net/voltage-drop-calculator.html?material=copper&wiresize=3.277&voltage=220&phase=ac&noofconductor=1&distance=100&distanceunit=feet&amperes=30&x=59&y=13

[ccbruin]

The Miller 211 pulls 25A. So plugging that into the calculator, I'd be getting 215V at the end with 10 gauge. With 8 gauge, right under 217V. I'm not sure that 2 volts is worth the extra cost of for the 8 gauge. I''ll probably never be using the machine at its max anyway.

[Hypoid]

Sweet!

For future reference, the rule of thumb is 3% or less voltage drop, unless your equipment specs say otherwise. Your equipment would thank you, if it could.

[zukrider]

i run a 60' extension of HD 10A cable. not to sure id push it to 100'. just make sure you have a solid breaker for it. an old shitty breaker may possibly stay on in a trip fault and cause a fire. ive seen it happen many a time!

[Hypoid]

If his outlet has a 50A receptacle, it should have a 50A breaker.

[Haku]

For my Miller 211 I got whatever was left of the spool at Home Depot of 10/3 SO cable, that turned out to be ~90 feet, and it has worked flawlessly. I haven't put a meter on it it to really see how much voltage drop I get, but the machine has never had a problem. The cable never got hot or anything either, so its clearly doing fine current carrying wise too.

I think you'll be fine as long as you keep any eye on it and don't go overboard with extended use. The manual says no more then 53 feet of extension cord and/or in house cabling (the wire from the breaker to the plug) in 230v mode, but it also says that is with a 14 guage cable (and 16 for the "in house" cable) and is likely just covering their ass. They also say to use a 25 or 35 amp breaker (depending on time delay or normal circuit breaker).

[ccbruin]

The breaker is a 70 amp breaker. (thats what it says)

Another question: the outlet says 250V, will that not be a problem hooking it up to the welder?

[Haku]

That just means the plug is rated for up to 250v (it should also have a amperage rating), not that it will always send that. You'll want to put a multi-meter on it to make sure it is the correct voltage, otherwise you risk "letting the smoke out" of your new welder. 230v works by essentially combining two standard lines, so you want to test between the two hots to get your combined voltage. It should be arranged like a normal N-15 110v wall socket (in that picture above, the one on top is the ground). If you test between the ground and the either of the other two you should still get 110-120v power, and between the two angled ones 220-240v power.

Not sure if your neighbor uses that for a dryer, but it might be worth swapping the circuit breaker to something lower for safeties sake. On the plus side, one would hope that if there is a 70a breaker that the wiring going to the plug would also reflect that and having the larger gauge cable is never a bad thing.

[ccbruin]

If the dryer is plugged into the outlet, shouldn't it be 220v?

[Haku]

There are MANY different factors that play into the end voltage coming out of the plug and anything you plug into them should be designed to cope with that variance (anything UL rated is required to be able to). A 10% difference isn't uncommon and can be cause by anything from voltage drop through the wiring, to fluctuating power coming from power plant and many other factors. Thats why I gave a range of voltages. You are only going to be able to attain factors of the orginal source voltage i.e. what you get coming down the line from the main power grid, which in 99% of residential use is 120v 60hz cycle power.

I'm not completely sure so don't quote me on this, but in theory you could just keep doing the same thing as a 220v circuit breaker does and combine multiple legs of 120v power to ramp up as much as you wanted (360v, 480v, 600v). Nothing saying its safe or at all advised, but that is my understanding of how it works. Regardless, what you get out of the 220v plug will is directly effected by the 120v source coming into the house and there isn't much you can do to change that with electrical transformers. Since those aren't really viable in the average household for stuff like dryers and welders and such, they just design them to use a range of voltages roughly +/-10%.

The 230v documentation in the welders manual likely comes because it falls in the middle of what you might get out of the plug. In some houses you'll see closer to 110v (which doubled is 220v) and some houses closer to 120v or slightly higher (which doubled would get you 240v). Like I said, the welder is designed to handle it, otherwise it would fail its safety testing and they couldn't sell it.

If you are talking about the plug, its not uncommon for a receptacle to be designed for a higher voltage or amperage rating then it is intended to be used for. Its never bad to have more capacity then needed when you are talking about connectors or cable. That isn't the case with circuit breakers though, and I personally wouldn't something closer related to what I would be using it for rather then having a lot of headroom. You definitely want the circuit breaker to trip before cable goes beyond its capacity (i.e. lets the smoke out).

[Hypoid]

Your equipment has it's own over-current protection built in. I would not worry about that.


The breaker is a 70 amp breaker. (thats what it says)

Another question: the outlet says 250V, will that not be a problem hooking it up to the welder?Now THAT is interesting! The circuit breaker should be sized to the wire in the circuit. It protects the wire between the breaker and the receptacle, nothing else. If it were my home, I'd be curious what size conductors are running through the walls.

As Josh said, single phase, 110/220V is standard to residential service. You have two "hot" legs, A-Phase and B-Phase. Both are present in your supply, and they add up to 220V when run phase to phase. Industrial service will have other voltages.

I went looking for a picture to show you some of the standard plug and receptacle configurations. Turns out I was wrong, you have a 50 AMP Range Receptacle. ;)

http://box1.theglens.net:8190/net/nema-straight-blades1.jpg

[xaza]

As Mike said, the breaker panel in your house has 230v wired to it. You might have spare slots in breaker panel making it very easy to wire up a 230v plug. Hopefully by Spring I will be having power run to my shed, will pass on any knowledge I gain about codes and such. I don't have any spares in my breaker panel and if we replaced it the entire house wiring would have to be brought up to current code since standards in the 40's were different. Mike said it right but I will word it differently. 230v is 2 hot legs carrying 115v each. Taking either of those hot legs to a neutral gives you 115v. Once inside a breaker panel is where my knowledge is very spotty. I believe the hot legs alternate as you go down. A 2 pole breaker will be big enough to fill 2 spots which will give you 230v power. The breaker is designed to be the weak link in the system. All wiring and plugs should be rated higher to allow the breaker to do it's job. Too high of a breaker risks damaging equipment. 2 of my wife's brothers are electricians and will be helping me. Due to the dangers of electricity I recommend a professional and can see if they might be up for a side job if you like.

[zukrider]

Cliff. You can get around the new panel by setting up a " hot tub" sun panel. Feed that panel with a 60 amp 2 pole. Move whatever circuits your trading for into the new panel. Then you can add the new extra stuff you need.