Welder Acting Up
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Freshman User
Joined: Oct 2005
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Welder Acting Up
I was welding some new floor pans in tonight and my Hobart 180 MIG welder was working fine. I put the gun down....pounded a few places on the floor pan, then tried to weld again....nothing....no arc....reset clamp..tried again..nothing....then a breaker blew in the wall box.....I reset the breaker and then tried again and a POP sounded from inside my welder and the fuse blew again.
I have been using a 10 foot extension cord that I made myself for my welder last week. I used 10 guage wire just like I did to wire up the 220 outlet for it. At first it was working fine. I am not sure if maybe it was the extension cord or what? After pushing the rest button, and plugging the welder directly into the outlet it works fine now but the weld sounds more like "bacon frying" than it did before.
Any ideas on what may have happened?
Tony
I have been using a 10 foot extension cord that I made myself for my welder last week. I used 10 guage wire just like I did to wire up the 220 outlet for it. At first it was working fine. I am not sure if maybe it was the extension cord or what? After pushing the rest button, and plugging the welder directly into the outlet it works fine now but the weld sounds more like "bacon frying" than it did before.
Any ideas on what may have happened?
Tony
Elder User
Joined: Jan 2007
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I'm no professional electrician, but I'm wondering if the wall box you wired in is enough to handle the welder under a load. 10 should be more than enough, but the load on the box itself combined with the extension cord, it's tough to say. There's a formula for wire gauge based on length of cord,, I think it's in the owners manual for the welder.
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Freshman User
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Good point about the length of the cord. My welder only supposedly pulls 18 amps....and the 10 guage can handle up to 30 amps. But with the added 10 feet of entension cord...hmm i dunno. The thing is that I have been using it with no problem for a while now....and tonight it is working fine. Makes me think it was some weird thing with me tryin to weld over painted and rusty surfaces with my MIG...... I have since ground all areas to bare metal.....works much better.....
Elder User
Joined: Dec 2003
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From: New Mexico
Kind of sounds like a voltage drop issue. You may have solved it by pulling the extension cord out of the mix. Did you overextend the duty cycle of the machine by any chance? They will shut themselves down if that happens.
