Welding Tips and Tricks

Hello all,

I'm looking to build a custom table to fit my space and I'm wondering if it is safe to store equipment in/on/under (in other words, touching) the table. Spatter and/or other dirtiness aside, my concern is whether having stuff with motors and/or electronics touching the steel grounded to the welder will get damaged by the current flowing between the ground and electrode.

In your experiences is it safe to store chop saws, grinders, plasma cutters, and other equipment on your table?

Thanks,

j

Yes it is safe

If you have a welding table with a top with holes every 2 inches I would only store scrap steel under it. On my certiflat table I get a lot of grinding dust going through the holes and I wouldn't want that stuff shifting down into my motors, and plasma cutters.

My entire garage is a workshop. Everything gets covered with the fine metal dust. I usually blow out things like the saw motors, or critical electrics with compressed air before use.

Hi all,

Thanks for the replies. It isn't dust/grime/sparks/whatever that I'm concerned with - it is the potential for current running through the devices in ways that they were not designed. I've read that you have to be careful when TIG welding devices that have electronics because the high frequency arc start can fry them. I'm trying to understand the scope of that warning and how other current may play a role.

@LtBadd, thank you for your reply. Could you expand a bit on why this would be safe?

Regards,

j

I can't give you an explanation such as an engineer might give, however as a welder/fabricator for 35+ years I have never encountered such a situation of equipment being damaged by welding, except if you don't have a good ground, I had one time where my ground wasn't attached to the rotator and the current found its way thru the 110v power line and started to melt it, but that was my fault for not having the ground attached to the rotator.

At home I only do TIG welding, usually my cell is on the table, no problems.

Thanks a bunch, LtBadd. That's the kind of information I'm looking for.

j

Current running around your parts and power tools won't hurt them. At most it might induce a tiny magnetic field. Wouldn't leave anything with a magnetic disk there but anything else you should do good.


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[quote="nomoreusmc"]Current running around your parts and power tools won't hurt them. At most it might induce a tiny magnetic field. Wouldn't leave anything with a magnetic disk there but anything else you should do good.


Unless there old, because then there not double insulated and the case or any metal part of them is grounded. there’s the potential to ground through them. This will melt them down. Old Milwaukee tools with the all metal body are a good example. I did melt down an old drill that was laying on my bench plugged in while I was welding. It was kinda funny It needed replacing anyway. Just flipped up my hood and it was smoking.

Not sure if this is relevant to the OP's concern but, on another forum I'm on a guy posted a photo of his welding setup for attaching brackets to his race cars rear axle. He had placed the ground on the pinion shaft and was mig welding on the axle tube. Now that's a big no no as the ground path was traveling through all the bearing and ring and pinion clearances. I could just see the little arcs jumping around and leaving mini welds. When welding on anything mechanical you should have the ground path as close to the work as possible.