All about welders and welding

[Sam-Q]

hey check the voltage of the wire feed motor, it's probably 12V DC. If so maybe one of those 1 Farad caps would help you out?

[Anthony]

I dont think reliability is an issue, especially with a kemppi. You'd have to look pretty hard to find a tig that isnt inverter, and they're fine. Even the knockoffs. Same 15 year old tech.

[driftke70]

"for the joy of welding"

[orange32]

What would people recommend for a single phase mig welder around $1000? I only have 10amp plugs at my house, I don't really want to get 15amp installed unless I have to. Has to be able to run with and without gas. I pretty much just want it to tack my exhaust and screamer together (i can take it to work and weld it properly) and to seam weld my chassis amongst otther smallish jobs around the house.

Would I be best to look for a better branded second hand welder, or buy a new one that may not be of the same quality?

[Sam-Q]

the only difference betwen 10A and 15A is just the outlet itself, 5 screws in total and a $15 outlet.

[Nicko]

Beware : MIGs over say 170AMP to 225AMPs that have 15A plugs have a 15A plug because they draw 12 ~ 15 amps at full song.

So unless you're changing plugs to to very light duty work, you're fucking yourself out of full power. And will probably start a fire in your fuse box on the side of your house if you do it for a decent enough length of time...

[Sam-Q]

with all respect that's completely wrong Nick. By Australian standards all household power supplies unless located for a fixed appliance with a keyed plug have to have as a minimum 2.5mm cable. Now unless this has to be de-rated it's ok for a 16A load. Even if it's not the circuit breaker is matched to the cable and how it's run. This is determined by the charts of the AS3008.1.1 rule book. So no matter how bad the conditions overloading a circuit will never cause any switchboard issues other than tripping the breaker/melting a fuse unless you have a shonky wiring job, I mean that's the whole point of the circuit protection. As a general rule you can suck as much current out of a cheap Arlec wall socket as the circuit will allow, this I know from personal experience, I push 20A amps out of mine. The reason why they even bother with the different pin is so someone doesn't use a 1mm cored extension lead to extend a 15A device, this will cause the lead to melt for sure. What the standards should be is that all outlets have the long pin and only the 10A leads have the shorter pin, that would make a lot more sense.

This is why I never bothered with any 15A wall outlets in the 20? or so outlets in my garage when I wired it all up, I just made a 15A female to 10A male adapter lead, however I did use a 1.5mm flex lead.

My ex-electrican rant here

[Nicko]

I used it for artistic expression.

Just get 15A

[orange32]

I had no idea that was the case. Is it possible to run a 10amp plug from a 15amp outlet? I only have 2 outlets in my garage and a welder would be the only thing running 15amp.

I am completely retarded when it comes to electricity and wiring

[Sam-Q]

yes you can chnage both your outlets over to 15A types and yes 10A fits in it still.

Hey you guys should see this 20A single amp outlet I have, all the pins are long like the earth in a 15A one.