Welding Tips and Tricks

I recently put a 220 dryer plug on my AC stick welder and it keeps tripping the breaker. The dryer (and stove) receptical is a 3 prong with 2 hot and a neutral. The welder is 2 hot and a ground. When hooking up the dryer plug, I hooked ground to neutral thinking that it was a ground. Are they compatible or is that why my breaker is tripping? I've tried 3 different 50 amp breakers and they all trip.

If it is, can I just cap the neutral on the plug and ground to something else? I would be sure to not touch the welder (while it's plugged up) without my gloves.

Tom94 wrote:I recently put a 220 dryer plug on my AC stick welder and it keeps tripping the breaker. The dryer (and stove) receptical is a 3 prong with 2 hot and a neutral. The welder is 2 hot and a ground. When hooking up the dryer plug, I hooked ground to neutral thinking that it was a ground. Are they compatible or is that why my breaker is tripping? I've tried 3 different 50 amp breakers and they all trip.

If it is, can I just cap the neutral on the plug and ground to something else? I would be sure to not touch the welder (while it's plugged up) without my gloves.

i beleive your welder's manual should have a page saying the setup of prongs, the phase, and the type of plug needed.
for example, this is what my powertig 250ex needs: hope this helped

noah

In the sixties was told "when all else fails,read the manual"

today the grand kids look at me funny and shout"RTFM"

The neutral and ground is only tied together at ONE point. At your main service entrance panel. All subsequent you remove the bonding jumper. This includes branch circuits and sub-panels. You need two phases, and one ground. The only reason you would need the neutral is if you had some type of control/display and it did not contain it's own dedicated control xfmr.

And so you are aware, a neutral is a current carrying conductor.

Not trying to be a dick, but I discourage DIY guys doing electrical.

What Make and Model of welder?
I use red and black for my hot wires, green for safety, white not used.

Tom94 wrote:I recently put a 220 dryer plug on my AC stick welder and it keeps tripping the breaker. The dryer (and stove) receptical is a 3 prong with 2 hot and a neutral. The welder is 2 hot and a ground. When hooking up the dryer plug, I hooked ground to neutral thinking that it was a ground. Are they compatible or is that why my breaker is tripping? I've tried 3 different 50 amp breakers and they all trip.

If it is, can I just cap the neutral on the plug and ground to something else? I would be sure to not touch the welder (while it's plugged up) without my gloves.

The dryer and stove should not be 2 hots and a neutral if they are 220 volt. What is most likely going on is that the dryer and stove wiring is not properly color coded. Open your welding machine and see where the wires are attached. The two hots will most likely be attached to the switch but one may be attached straight to the transformer. The ground should go to the chassis or a lug on the transformer. Does the machine work if it's powered up at a different location?

Three-wire 240 is kind of mickey-mouse in my opinion but has been done this way for decades.

For safe 240, I prefer red and black for the two 120volt hot legs, white for the working neutral back feed isolated from ground, and green for the chassis ground in case something hot comes loose and grounds to the chassis.

The white neutral completes the circuit and back feeds the two hot legs (which are timed at 180 degrees) to ground. This neutral normally carries less current because much of the energy is released in the form of heat. This is why you often see cables with a smaller gauge neutral.

Additionally, your two hot legs must feed from opposing phases at the main panel.

It's called 240 single-phase but is actually two phases timed at 180 degrees and at 60 cycles per second in the U.S. Three-phase is correctly named and has three hot legs timed at 120 degrees.

I recommend this work to be performed by an electrician because electricity can kill you if you don't know what you're doing.

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