Welding Tips and Tricks

Hey everyone =)

I'm a 38 year old apprentice welder... finally made the jump from white collar to blue collar, and am loving every minute of it. Wish I had done it years ago.

A little bit about myself: I spent 11 years in the Canadian Forces, first as an infantry officer, and then as a signals officer. Along the way, I spent way too much time in school, and picked up a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in computer science. Started a PhD, and then ran out of money, and had to get a real job.... IT was the only thing I could manage to land. Did that for a few years, and hated every moment of it; Your average waitress gets treated with more respect. No lie.

I ended up being a victim of the recent downturn, and found myself unemployed for an incredibly painful 14 months. Had to do a fair bit of soul-searching during that time, and realized that I really didn't want an IT or software developer job, even if I could manage to find one.

Ever since I was a kid, I loved working with my hands, so I started looking for work as a shop helper, to try and work my way up... got a response from a shop here in Calgary saying that they didn't need a shop helper, but how would I feel about running their CNC Waterjet?

I jumped at it, so now I spend my time running an ENORMOUS waterjet (table is somewhere in the neighbourhood of 10' x 27') and trying to get more welding time in the shop... mostly GMAW and GTAW. I've been practicing a fair bit of 6010 open root, and 7018 fill, as I'd like to end up working up north on the pipelines at some point in time (Keystone XL maybe!?)

I just picked up an ESAB EMP 235 as well, and am itching to get more practice time in ... though I think it'll have to wait until I can get a generator, since my house is only fed by a single 100amp service, and my garage only has a single 15amp circuit, and a generator is a few grand cheaper than rewiring will be.... BUT, the 3" of 3/32 7018 bead that I laid down before the breaker popped was pretty darned sweet

Anyway, just wanted to say hi, and to give a shoutout of thanks to Jody, Jonathan, and Roy for running the WT&T podcast; Just found it a couple of weeks ago and have been listening to it steadily since finding it. Tons of great info! =)

Cheers,

Ben

Welcome to the forum, Ben.

If you have open space in your panel, you can safely add a breaker for 230v to it and run a dedicated outlet to the garage. You might need to vary run time between the dryer, an oven, AC/Heat and your welder, but most panels have less load on them they are rated for regularly.

If you’ve been running 3/32”@110v, youllexceed that circuit pretty quickly (as you discovered).

Welcome Ben from a fellow Calgarian. I'd love to see that giant waterjet in action.

As CJ737 said, just run a dedicated 230V line, or even install a subpanel in the garage. Those are cheap and can get one at any of the box stores. You still might exceed the 100A total like CJ said though.