GeneV
Elite Member
Found this 50' cord for the welder on Ebay, best deal I ever saw on these, anywhere: Heavy Duty ETL Welder Extension Cord 8AWG 50 Foot Cord 50A 3 prong | eBay
10ga??I have mine on a 10 romex wired to a breaker. Dryer plug on end. 27 years going on...
Yes, #10-2 with ground. On a 30 amp breaker. Just welded a road grader blade on a tractor bucket edge. New bottom in bucket too. T-1 steel. 7018 rod. Pretty big as far as my welding projects are now days. If it was to start tripping the breaker, which it never has, I could get a 40 breaker. Which with an open wire it can dissipate heat. Nothing to burn. Just oilfield pipe, purlin, sheet metal. They been cleaning chicken houses out with it. So I guess it's okay. I mean commercial chicken houses. 800 truck loads of manure. Slat mover fixes to that bucket also. Four 600' houses at that farm. Dad has four too. But his are 440' we were with Pilgrim Pride.10ga??
Well I dunno about your guys, I just wanna run my stick welder farther away from my 220v outlet, doing normal hobby type stuff w/o having to resort to using a 110v receptacle, and then having to run down to the basement to reset the 20amp breaker when I trip it. I'm never gonna max out the amps and/or light up the cord doing what I do.But, 50 amps is 50 amps and I do agree it's better to run #6. I built my own out of #6 with an F box for the receptacle end and a weather proof spring door on it.
If you have the space, uncoil in a warm spot ahead of time, fold it in gentle curves in long sections.The off the shelf cords are cheaper, and the ends on them seem better. However I've found in a Canadian winter you may as well be trying to coil and uncoil a piece of steel pipe.
Of course making your own from cabtire leads to replacing the ends (especially the female ends) CONSTANTLY if they spend any amount of time outside or around fertilizer equipment.
What I'd really love to find is a factory made cord with the molded ends, that has the nice cabtire type rubber jacket. Even if they were 2-3x the price I'd gladly buy them.
It seems surprising that they don't exist, but I at least haven't been able to find such a thing yet....
That does work, the real problem comes trying to coil it back up after the job is done....If you have the space, uncoil in a warm spot ahead of time, fold it in gentle curves in long sections.