Welding Tips and Tricks

This is a great site, great videos, well done.

I always consider myself a newbie. I've been on this site many times, but never partake in the discussion forum.

Reason why I finally signed up. Hope someone can direct me to the hard evidence.

We are working on an aluminum project that requires a combination of TIG and MIG. A co-worker of mine stated that we should never have a work lead of our mig machine hooked up while we have our tig work lead hooked up. He stated that if someone were to strike arcs at the same time with both machines, this could cause an electrical shock.

Is this true? If so, or not, is there any materials I can print or read that verifies his statements. Ive looked through the owners manuals and did not find anything. Ive also read through AWS_Z49.1_SAFETY_IN_WELDING_AND_CUTTING_AND_ALLIED_PROCESSES and found nothing containing to this.

I look forward to your reply.

Thanks

Welcome from Bemidji.

Not sure if I have the answer for you, but I'm thinking that it should not matter that it's aluminum - people weld multiple machines on large objects all the time - pipelines and ship building come to mind.

welcome to the forum. john

Welcome, cautious,

You're being fed an "old wives' tale".

Ground is ground is ground. It's that simple.

I've build a complex structure that had 20+ TIG welders in HFAC, 4 in DCEN and 6 MIG machines all running together with the structure being the common ground (and it was not earth-bonded beyond machine grounding).

No shock. Just electrons flowing where they are expected to flow.

Steve S

Yup there are a lot of 8 pack welders all set and running on job sites everywhere. Welding on the same structure every day of the week.

Welcome to the forum.

Thank you all. I appreciate your experience.


Skol Vikes.

What if tig and mig were running different polarities? Would that cause a weld table or part to become live with power?

Makes no difference. Polarity is always relative to ground, and all the machines will have ground at the same potential.

If your building is wired right, the machine ground will be at earth ground.

Steve S