Anything welding

I can't remember if I ask this or brought it up..
Has anybody had any experience with Fronius Magic Waves?

 

FYI:

$15 - https://www.homedepot.com/p/Square-...door-Main-Lug-Load-Center-QO2L30SCP/100157760
$17 - https://www.homedepot.com/p/Square-...er-with-Cover-No-Door-HOM612L100FCP/100149777

 

I am just a hobby welder, so not a lot of hours on my machines, but I have had one of these for about 1.5 years and am still happy with it. No issues to date. I also have their Cut-60 plasma cutter and same result, no issues.

I have actually used the arc welding more than TIG, and it is really smooth and consistent. I had only used my Dad's Lincoln tombstone before and always sucked at it. This thing is much easier for me to use.

In addition to all the control features, I liked the 3yr warranty with postage paid both directions, and the 24/7 US based customer support. I've called it twice on Sunday, just to see if they answer. They did.

This guy does a pretty thorough review, and in the end, says he would definitely recommend the machine. Foot pedal I believe is his only small beef with it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YkWY3nVAlY

Again, just a hobby welder, so take my opinion for what it's worth.

 

Yea but the wire is the killer. I’ll need about 100 feet of 6/3 romex.

 

I was kinda figuring you'd use the same supply wire whether or not you put a sub panel & breaker where you tapped off for 120V.

 

If it was just a single 220 outlet I can get away with 12/3 romex. But if I put in a sub panel I’d rather do it where I can run multiple circuits and get full benefit from it. But the sub panel does sound really good. I’d love to have a few outlets on every wall plus 220, and a dedicated outlet for some of the larger tools. Who knows, maybe I’ll just do that one day.

 

Your wire needs to match the breaker.

Please consult an electrician.

Welders fall under a different section of the NFPC, so much confusion is injected to these conversations involving welder plug wiring.

 

That was pretty neat to watch, thanks for sharing.

As a newbie it was interesting noting some of the techniques. Tacking the corners and ensuring equal diagonals before then welding. Using cut pieces as jigs for the drawer slide spacing.

Also looked like he did multiple tacks and alternated welding spots - guessing to even out heat related expansion and thus helping keep things square?

... and is that a tap in the drill/driver to thread the wheel bolt holes at ~3:18?

 

12/3 would match the breaker I would use for just a welder. 30 amp breaker with 100 ft of wiring. Am I missing something?

 

12 gauge is for 20 amp circuits; for a 30 amp circuit you should use 10 gauge wire. If you're just wiring the welder and it's 220 volt, you just need 10/2 wire (2 hots and a ground, the ground isn't included in the wire count). If you're going to also include a 110 receptacle off of it, then you'd need 10/3 wire (2 hots and 1 neutral), but as was mentioned earlier, you want to be careful about putting devices with smaller loads on larger capacity circuits as the circuit breaker potentially won't trip in time if something off the 110 receptacle overloads.

The way I remember which gauge wire to use is to start at 14 gauge for 15 amp and increase one wire size for the next size breaker:
15 amp = 14 gauge
20 amp = 12 gauge
30 amp = 10 gauge
40 amp = 8 gauge
50/60 amp = 6 gauge

 

Thank you. This needs to be stickied. @tcBob

This conversation comes up often and being able to refer to this post would be valuable.

 

... and if the wire run is "complicated", there's something to be said for maybe running one 10/2 for the welder plus a separate 12/2 for 120V outlets (each from their own breaker) instead of wrestling 6/3 through existing construction...

 

I think there’s a little more involved for longer lengths of wire. If over 50 feet you step up in size right? I haven’t looked at it in a while and anything I said above (minus the 6/3 for the sub panel) was off of memory... apparently I was wrong. Haha.

 

My hands hurt just thinking about snaking 6/3. No thanks!

 

Not sure, you'd need to consult the code or an electrician on what distance you'd need to step up.

 

Try 3 runs of 500mcm through cable trays... it was only 50 foot runs but it was inside a hot substation control house...

 

No "likes"!

 

I just redid my whole garage. Ran 2 6/3 to nema6-50 outlets on each side of my garage, through bored joist holes, ran 12/2 down each wall on seperate breakers, new light circuit for indoor lights, new circuit for outdoor lights, garage door sensors and button wiring in walls/roof. Not too bad of a job except for climbing over all my shit and moving it a dozen times..

 

Thanks for your input, I watched the whole video... Seems like a pretty legit machine, especially if he gave it a pass.. And especially for that price.

I guess the only pain if you had a problem would be, not having local support as in taking to the shop where you bought it.. And having to send it in if it had a real bad problem.

 

So I went back up to the welding supply shop today, to take the box and rest of the parts to the 205, and when I got there the EASB rep and manager were in the back with the two machines I had turned in and one of his fresh out the box demos (that he wanted to make sure worked before looking like an idiot in front of people).. Now they were welding great., so something is really off because yesterday, both of them tried and weren't able to get it to work..

They were perplexed as well as myself... I guess the machines have artificial intelligence and like to play with people... CCP warfare at it's finest. Go figure. So weird.