Welding Tips and Tricks

Bought an older used hobart 250 ac/dc tig welder. They talk about water cooling but i do not have the assessory water cooler. When do i need water cooling and why. my usage is for home use on steel 3/16-1/4 short welds.
Also it has a round 4 pin plug which i need to addapte to a 3 pin blade but how do i know which pin is nutral and which is 120/120 and ground?

Do you have a bunch of pics???

That would help us help you.

~John

Do you have the machine model???

TigWave 250???

As to the plug you mean the plug on the power cord??

Please get some pics,
We can help.

~John

Water cooling a tig torch will allow you to use a smaller 20-series torch and it will be good up to 250A DCEN, probably a little less on AC depending on how much cleaning action you are running (because it puts more heat into the torch).

With a standard air-cooled torch to get to 200A you need a 26-series torch, which is huge in comparison. Over 200A air-cooled and your options diminish drastically, and they are usually prohibitively expensive.

correction, after removing the unit side panel i found the plugin line cord is only 3 conductor on a 4 pin plug (small plug pin is not used) so i have white L1 black L2 and green frame ground. I also noted that the jumper bars are set to 460 volts. So my next concern is: im powering the welder by way of a 80 amp 480 volt generator. But the welder says 460 volt in and the generator says 480 volt out. do i have a problem ?

With a 480 volt generator you most likely do not have a problem as most machines have a tolerance. I would check the manual and if it doesn't specifiy then contact the manufacturer to confirm. As far as wiring goes, I would use a multimeter to make sure I got it all straight

thanks guys . . . going to go weld.