Welding Tips and Tricks

Hi all new here and have a question on this 300 amp tig made for airco,by LTEC its one of the red orange ones.
I got it up and running at my house on a 50 amp breaker with a run of 2.5 feet of 8 gauge wire.
My friend who does electrical with me at the school district said if i run it on this size breaker and wire it will cut my power in half,NOW what i want to do with the welder,which is 1 phase 220.
I want to start building tubular control arm,the material will be 1.5x.156 wall dom steel tube to ball joint cups that have a wall thickness fo .250 to .437
Will i have enough power to get good penetration,or do i need to up grade to a better power source?
Thank you.
Phil

Fire it up and see what amperage makes the breaker trip.

Mostly with the material you're describing you'll be 200 amps and under anyway - so you'll end up fine.

Remember that penetration is achieved by proper bevel (and gap when required), not raw power.

Ive fired it up and welded steel lap joint with 3/16 plate and it was good,the some times it flips the breaker when i turn it on then off,other then that i do need to test how high i can go before it flips with me welding.
I will be upgrading the breaker to a 60 amp,and#6 wire.
Thank you.

I used one of these in a class I took, it was run on 3 phase. I can't find a manual but I found a picture of the back plate on one, it says it's 22kW, so if you want to run it full power at 240v single phase, you would need almost 100A. Hard to imagine you'd need anything more than a 50A breaker for the work you describe, since that would be about half the output of the machine, or 150A. The #8 wire you're using is fine for that short distance.

I'd investigate why the breaker is tripping when you turn the machine off, assuming I understood your description. That might suggest the power switch is arcing enough to draw a high current long enough to trip the breaker. If you're handy you might pull the panel off the welder and try to examine the main power switch for arcing damage.