[Farmwelding]

Does anyone use a/c stick welding in a workplace setting for any purpose. A/C stick welding seems to me like more of a home welding pros was but maybe I'm wrong. If you do what do you use it in and why not D/C.

[TrunkMonkey315]

Most the welding I do at work is SMAW, I have used A/C but only for specific reasons, usually to get around arc blow issues when welding in corners or on crane rail that's been in service.

[noddybrian]

Every place I ever worked had AC stick welders - think things are a bit different here in the UK - pretty much all rods are designed to run AC including 7018 as standard - most places had maybe 1 Lincoln torpedo DC welder sat in a corner for oddity welds ( kinda like a pipeline 200 generator close coupled inline to an AC mains motor ) the normal everyday welders were typically 300 > 600 amp always oil cooled & virtually static in a shop with very long leads weighing anything up to 3/4 ton - if for some special application you had to use DC then there were stand alone oil cooled rectifiers which you connect inline with the transformer about the size of a 40gallon barrel - anything portable would be engine drive - at college the booths all had little oil cooled Oxfords ( about 250 amp )under the benches as nothing big was done there only test plates etc ) we did have air cooled " buzz boxes " started showing up mid 80's but these were treated much the same as you guys - home use on a budget & some farmers if you needed it portable - by the time anything DC started appearing with stable arc & decent OCV most production stuff in shops were changing to Mig & still is - not much stick work except repairs - worked places with transformer based but electronic controlled DC sets mostly Kemppi that got used for pressure pipe stuff so one machine could do Tig root / 7018 fill / cap - these days you'll see anything with local sales / support bought on price plus small " handbag / manbag " inverters for hard to reach / odd welds done on site on mostly shop prebuilt structures to assist in build / completion where bolts cannot be used - you can weld with AC or DC but the transition takes some adjustment especially on amps / my last Butters inverter died a while back & for weeks I used my old Murex 330 oil cooled AC which sits in a corner - works as good as the day it was built ( probably 60's ) second hand when I got it ex NCB -took a while to go back to AC as DC is easier & needs less skill / exact amps but it got the jobs done till I gave up on a repair & got a Parweld as a replacement - new stuff is nice & portable but it does'nt seem to last - I should try to get the old Kemppi 450 back that used to be in my shop but ended up out mates place - only thing wrong is it really chews through electricity.