[RickV]

Hi All,
I'm a new guy here but 'old' on TheWeldingWeb. At 66 years old, welding has been a hobby for me the past 10 years. I began cheap and dumb and I am now cheap and smart! I have bought, restored and sold about 15 arc welders: 8 Lincoln AC-225s, 2 Lincoln AC/DC 225/125, 3 Linde AC/DC 250 and a few others. I have passed courses in oxy-acet, stick and tig. I have fair equipment: oxy-acet, Lincoln Mig 180, 3 identical 90amp DC-inverters in parallel (stick of DC tig) and finally an old school Airco Heliarc AC/DC tig welder - the big one @875 lbs. My out of practice welds are something to behold - bring an air-sickness bag! I seem to be good at acquiring capability but weak on using it! Nice to meet you all.

[weldin mike 27]

Hey, welcome to the show. you'll find somebody from just about all fields here.

Mick

[Braehill]

Rick,

How does the 3 welders in parallel work? Does that take you to 270 amps? Do you then set each at say 30 amps to get a 90 amp output? Just curious.

Len

[RickV]

Rick,
How does the 3 welders in parallel work? Does that take you to 270 amps? Do you then set each at say 30 amps to get a 90 amp output? Just curious.
Len

Hi Len... yep - all as you said.

I only tried it on stick - although I suppose I could try it on Tig.
Each welder is rated at 80 amps stick and 100 amps Tig.

On stick, the most I could get was 70 amps - as measured with a DC clamp-on meter.
Frankly, 70 amps output was just sufficient to run 3/32" 6011/10, 6013 and 7014 but not 7018.

On stick, the output voltage was stated to be I think it was 22 volts... quite low to think about paralleling.
I tried paralleling two welders and measured 140 amps output on stick - both welders set at max.
With two welders and 140 amps max, it was way better: I could run 1/8" in all the above electrodes but not 5/32" 7018.

When I got the third identical welder, I tried paralleling the three and measured 210 amps output with stick.
With three welders, I could easily run 5/32" 7018 at 160 to 180 amps.

The only limitation was/is that with the low 22V output voltage, you can't draw a long arc - that's OK on steel but when stick welding aluminum it's really limiting as you really need a higher voltage machine as the arc length varies rapidly.