Long lost Member needs help (Welder to Fuse Box/Panel)!!!

[MONSTER]

Hey Guys!!! Long time no see (type). lol

In my pursuit of other interest, I recently scored a 220v Welding Machine.
My Fuse Box (Cardboard Tube and Glass Screw-in Fuses), is only about 3-4 feet from the back door, so I figure I'll just wire a recepticle from the box/panel, with a few feet of wire (have 6-3 wire, and proper recepticle) so I can run it out the door, and weld on the patio. Im not an Electrician, but I know the risk (fire, injury, etc), Im "reasonably" inteligent (no comments from the peanut gallery Halgar!!! ) and careful, and dont want to pay someone to do it. Im sure Ive seen household electrical threads on here before, and figured someone could walk me through it.

I'd sure appreciate the help. Ive had the welder a week, and am anxious to start stickin some metal together.

[AscotConversion]

What is the amp rating on the welder? You are going to need 2 hots to get 220v from the panel. You have a fuse panel, which is a little different than a breaker panel to set this up. I don't know if you're going to find glass fuses in the rating you may need, so you may have to do something different. With a receptacle, again, make sure you get something that will be rated for the amp draw. Worse come to worst, you may need to come off of the buss. I have seen a lot of guys who do wood floors or terrazzo refinishing clamp to the buss with big alligator clips...not safe, but I don't know exactly what you have.

If you burn your house down, I never posted

[Halgar]

I would not recommend tapping a welder into a fuse panel system. Even if the fuse panel could handle the load, odds are the wiring can't. You'd be better off to upgrade your service panel and then drop in a line for the welder.

[jwscab]

yeah, I am in NO way giving you advice here.....

if you have an old panel, you need to first make sure you actually get 2 110vac legs coming into the property so you can get 220vac.

in a normal system, each 110v leg is out of phase 180 degrees so that if you measured across them, you get 220VAC. You also get a return wire coming to the property, this is the 'common' leg of a transformer, so between it and either of the other two lines, you get 110VAC.

with an old knob and tube/glass screw in fuse panel, your best bet to wire 220VAC would be to connect a subpanel, with either ganged fuses(old school, but newer school than the screw in fuses), or a ganged breaker (at this point in time, probably easier to find locally and readily). the breakers are also very fast acting and would be safer. A supbanel box with some hard conduit interconnecting the two panels would be preferable, following by romex/conduit to a 30-50amp nema power socket. From there I would build a fat extension to plug in and locate the welder where necessary.

I'm not well versed on the latest NEC code, but that is how I would do it.

[AscotConversion]

In the end, he needs to post the amp draw of the welder. And unless he has some super weird setup, he should have 2 legs of 120v to ground coming into his place. 220v (or 240 ) via 2 legs is pretty standard due to the widespread use of electric dryers and ovens. The utility is not going to drop off 2 legs of a phase or 2 b phase unless they totally screwed up, which is pretty rare.

Fuses are actually safer than breakers (you can't switch them back on ), but breakers are more convenient. I don't really know much about welders, so I can't assume huge amp draw. However, if it's an old panel, like a 60A deal, and your welder pulls 50A, and you like to have lights on and run tvs and computers, it's not a real great idea to do this.

So post up welder Amp draw, your panel amp rating, and better yet a picture of the panel.

[jwscab]

I think the minimum breaker rating for the smallest 220VAC welder would be a 30A breaker.

and yes, you are right about the distribution of the phases, but when he says 'cardboard tube and screw in fuses', that leads me to believe there could be ANYTHING there.

[Jay Dub]

What size is your panel?. What size is your welder? What is the duty cycle? Not giving advice either, but more than likely (if you don't want to change your panel to a modern unit - which I would HIGHLY recomend BTW) than you will more than likely need to mount another (sub) panel with an over current device large enough for your welder. This sub panel would be tapped directly off the bussing in the existing panel (this can be pretty hairy if you don't know what you are doing) to a main breaker in the new panel (-to make it easy within sight and 10ft.). Out of this sub panel, then you can run an S.O. cord or hard pipe an outlet for your welder. These are your safest, realistic options, as I don't think you will find Edison based fuses in the ampere range you need. BTW fuses are typically safer than breakers (faster acting, and not resetable) just less convenient. Also, The ampere rating on your home panel is per leg. A 100A panel is 100A per 120vac leg. This means you have 200A available in your 120/240vac panel. Most people don't know this, and ALOT of homes are sold panel/service upgrades every year when they don't really need them. -Jeff

[MONSTER]

Thanks Guys!!! But all that about legs, phases, ganged fuses/breakers is all "greek" to me. Can we do this like "Electrical Wiring for Dummies"?

I was told by an "Engineer", that if I need to, I could wire to the Water Heaters fuses, and just turn it off when I want to weld.

Give me a few minutes to upload the pics I took.

[MONSTER]

Hope this works.

[MONSTER]

Oh yeah, Welder info:

Input
Single Phase 60 Hertz
230 Volts 50Amps


Output
225 amps max at 25 arc volts
Temp Rise 115*C Max
79 volts Max OCV at Rated Input
Duty Cycle 20%

[jwscab]

that's no problem, it's fairly modern for a fused panel. Just get another ganged fuse block to plug in down at the bottom right corner, and stick a junction box with a nema 50 amp socket next to it on the right, and wire it up. Use a short piece of conduit between them, and then build or buy an extension cord for the welder. Actually, the stove/dryer type socket might have the box as part of it's build, so you just need a short run of wire, and mount the box on the wall.

a ganged fuse block is like the other ones in the panel, if you notice, when you pull the T handle out, there are 2 fuses, and a 220VAC output has the red and black running to that ganged block. for instance, the block at the top left hand side is a ganged one.

[RC10Eh]

Maybe not in this particular situation , but could you not run it to your stove outlet , assuming that your stove is 220 . Certainly not for daily use , but if your gonna weld a couple of hours on the weekend , could be the ticket , stove plugs are about 10 bucks . Just a thought ............

[MONSTER]

I think I already have the Outlet (NEMA/EEMAC 6-50R, correct or no), and some 6-3 Wire. I wanted to do this as cheaply (but not dangerous) as I could. How much will a Junction Box cost? Why the conduit? The 6-3 wire has 3 covered and 1 "naked" wire in it. The Ganged Blocks only require 2 wires. Need different wire from block to junction? I was told its not good (and definately expensive - $2 or 3/foot, plus the "ends") to run the welder on an extension cord. To get me off the patio, and into the garage would take a 40 - 60 ft cord.

Is this the CHEAPEST way to do it SAFELY???

[jwscab]

the junction box is cheap.

how far would you plan to run the 6-3 cable externally(not in the walls of the building)? Is it metal jacketed or just a vinyl sleeve? problem with running it all over (40-60ft) is that it should be run in conduit or metal jacketed to be SAFE. that's why the extension cord is good, it's only a safety hazard when in use.

running a welder off an extension cord is not a big deal, especially since you are gonna only be using this infrequently, and usually not at the top end of the machines capabilities. An extension cable will eventually cause a lot of loss, but even with running the machine at the top end, you only weld in short bursts. the heating and loss effect is minimal. Now if you were running an industrial welder for 10-12 hours a day on a continuous wire feeder, then an extension would be a problem.

you should consult your local NEC code (ie, library) for how to run external conductors, not within a wall.

unfortunately, running heavy wiring is not going to be cheap no matter what you do, whether jacketed, conduit, or extension cable.

as for wiring in the panel, the fuse terminals will get a black and red conductor, then the white and bare wires would connect to the bonding strip where all the other white and bare wires are. On the connector end, you would put the red and black on the 'line' blades of the socket, and the white may just be wire nut'ed and taped off if the connector doesn't use it, the bare wire would connect to the frame of the socket, usually a green nut/bolt/tab.

[AscotConversion]

If that panel is not on the surface of the wall, you're gonna have to figure out a way to get out of the wall.

The cable you have has 2 wires (red/black) to use as "hot" conductors, 1 for the neutral (white), and the bare wire is your ground. The outlet you have only uses the 2 hot wires, and the ground. I'm assuming you have a neutral bar at the top of the panel where all the white wires go? That's actually NOT where the ground should go, since the neutral bar is for the grounded conductor (the neutral), and what you are hooking up is the grounding conductor, meaning straight to earth. Really you should have a separate ground buss, or at least a lug on the enclosure. At the same time, someone has probably already taken a ground to the neutral bar in that panel already....

You're also going to have go to a supply house, not home depot, to find that fuse block, most likely. Bring that paper you photographed, unless you want to take a fuse block off so they know what you are looking for.

Also, if you're going with the cable, you're going to need a cable connector of some type where you enter the panel, so you don't have the cable rubbing on sheet metal.