Welding Tips and Tricks

I have a older Lincoln 175 square wave tig at my house do a descent amount of welding my question is does anyone have any real world experience with electricity bills that may have switched to a newer inverter style machine. want to make the switch just wondering if I will be saving any money on my huge electricity bills

I doubt it's your welder causing huge electricity bills, it's likely your A/C and other appliances. By comparison, welders use very little when everything is factored in to your monthly statement, even if it is a transformer welder. You can't weld 8hrs straight every day. You would literally have to be hitting the ~20% duty cycle of your welder each and every single 10-minute period for 10-20 hrs a day, every day for 30 days, to see a difference. I looked up the max current draw of your machine and it's duty cycle, btw. 57A @ max current draw (on 230VAC).

Now if you had a monster 500A welder, and you had employees rotating 3 shifts per day, running that thing full bore wide-open for 5 days a week every single week, then that'd be a different story.

That being said, you'd save very little going to an inverter compared to your machine (unless you have a ridiculously efficient appliances that consume nothing, even then A/C & heating consume a ton). Yes they can consume less power, and are way more compact for the amperage they put out, but I have a feeling you are not being fed parts to TIG weld off a conveyor belt and welding non-stop for 2 out of every 10 min.

57A @ 20% duty cycle for 8 hours straight, 30 days a month, is approx $75 in electricity. If you're welding that much and not bringing in enough money to offset $75, then I suggest you re-evaluate your business plan. I would.

I see Oscar replied, but here's my $0.02.

You might be able to get the machine to draw about 1/2 the amps by using an inverter, I just looked online in the Lincoln manual and it says it draws 59/53 amps at 208/230 volts.

Most 200 amp inverters use about 30 amps.

Now, this is what I believe Oscar pointed out and which I completely agree. Your machine usage is a very small amount of the overall electrical bill on your home, so if you're expecting an inverter to have a huge effect on your electrical bill, I suspect you're gonna be seriously disappointed when you look at your bill at the end of the month.

A new refrigerator may have a bigger payoff overall if you have an inefficient refrigerator.

with home power bils the normal culprits are typically things that run all the time (lights,fridge, frezzer), resistance heating (hot water) and house heating/cooling (aircon, heaters).

things like hot water leaking out the valve, badly running fridge, bad performing aircon (gas issues, duct issues etc).
also with homes is air leakage issues meaning you have to reheat or cool that replacment air all the time. hot air leaks out up top and that sucks in cold air down the bottom.

thank your lucky stars your not living here, our power is at least double what USA is.

It just happens that the other day I was curious when I saw somewhere that my welder has an hour meter and usage stats, and checked what I've done with it. I bought it new in early Feb 2016 for at work, and use for 95% of welding here. It's not the only welder, there's 4 other options. Anyway, It gets a fair amount of use, however it's not a production welding shop. A week might go by where it's not used, then it might get 10 hr days many in a row. It's just the nature of the business.

I have less than 36 hours of arc time on it... Something like 14xxx arcs, mid 14s. Using those numbers, if I were to factor in the cost of electricity, the typical current draw, etc, the cost is positively meaningless.

Now, if you WANT a new inverter machine, well then just forget about the electric savings and just tell your wife you want one. Lol. The truth will out, I think they say.

On a side note, I have wondered about power consumption of my heat treat oven also. My power company has a website that tracks real-time usage, these are fairly common nowadays with the new meters available for electric. I decided to come in one Sunday when things were closed up and check "Real" usage. Keep in mind, it's not easy to calculate using just the ratings plaque, because it doesn't run full time. So, I ran the oven for a part on Sunday, then when the data became available, I looked at the usage graph at that time. Sure enough there was a "spike" of usage from basically 0 to 4Kw. But the total usage for that day ended up costing about $0.80, much of which was background use. What I used to think was a $5 bill, is more like $0.50... Don't lose sleep over it.

BugHunter wrote:Now, if you WANT a new inverter machine, well then just forget about the electric savings and just tell your wife you want one. Lol.

I like your way of thinking! Or better yet, just order it and tell her it's coming.

It is the way I think...I bought another welder recently and just told me wife a box would be showing up. Albeit not a very expensive one, but garage is pretty darn packed...I have never had her get very mad no matter what tools or machines I buy.

I pity anyone who's wife dictates what tools and/or machines they get...I try to be understanding to the things she likes as well, that's what makes a marriage work. Mine has been going for close to 34 years and I still love her dearly. Great mother to our kids as well. Now if I was irresponsible and just went out buying machines I couldn't afford, maybe it would be a different story.

reminds me of the time the wife and I went shopping. I picked up a case of beer, she told me to put it back, cant afford it. Couple aisles later she picked up beauty cream for twice the price of my beer. I told her put it back,cant afford it. She said the cream makes her beautiful for me. I said "that's what the beer is for". I still walk with a limp.

BillE.Dee wrote:reminds me of the time the wife and I went shopping. I picked up a case of beer, she told me to put it back, cant afford it. Couple aisles later she picked up beauty cream for twice the price of my beer. I told her put it back,cant afford it. She said the cream makes her beautiful for me. I said "that's what the beer is for". I still walk with a limp.

LMAO!!!! Now that was a great one!!!

BugHunter wrote:Keep in mind, it's not easy to calculate using just the ratings plaque, because it doesn't run full time.

$20 on Amazon. Keeps track of cumulative power consumption, until you reset it or it reaches 999 kWh

BillE.Dee wrote:reminds me of the time the wife and I went shopping. I picked up a case of beer, she told me to put it back, cant afford it. Couple aisles later she picked up beauty cream for twice the price of my beer. I told her put it back,cant afford it. She said the cream makes her beautiful for me. I said "that's what the beer is for". I still walk with a limp.

Good story for sure! I can't top that...my wife rarely tells me to put anything back.

If she does she has good reason...luckily after 33+ years she still has some daylight between her legs, when she walks!

Oscar wrote:$20 on Amazon. Keeps track of cumulative power consumption, until you reset it or it reaches 999 kWh

Who makes them and how do they work? How do you get the data from them?

For everything at work I would need 220 3 phase versions as well.

BugHunter wrote:

Oscar wrote:$20 on Amazon. Keeps track of cumulative power consumption, until you reset it or it reaches 999 kWh

Who makes them and how do they work? How do you get the data from them?

They all come from china. Just search for AC voltmeter on Amazon. that easy.

How do you get the data? It's right there on the display. Nothing to get. Just look at it.

BugHunter wrote:For everything at work I would need 220 3 phase versions as well.

No you don't necessarily. You put one of those babies on your two of your leads as long as it is kept to ≤260V, (or a hot lead to neutral if you have a neutral that also shows the same voltage. Then the current transformer goes around one lead only. Total power (W) and/or energy consumption (kWh) can be obtained by just multiplying by 1.73 because of the 3-Φ nature of the circuit, and divide by the Power Factor. Bam, done.

Example:

Energy: 1,500 kWh
Power Factor: 0.65
Total 3-phase energy consuption = 1,500 kWh * 1.732 / 0.65 = 4000 kWh.

Sorry, on my tablet unless I open the image in a new window I can't see the display. Now that I opened it I see that. I'm not accustomed to Forum software not already showing the entire image as a smaller size. Or if it does, it makes it a link generally so you click on the image and it opens the full image. I had to specifically hold and hover the item then open in a new page. Now I see the display.

After I posted that I would need three phase versions, I thought about that just calculating from the two that were available. Or even just one of the 120 volt legs. For the amount that I have cared about it, using the power company's website has worked. I have a kilowatt meter for 110 items.

I'll look them up. Thanks

BugHunter wrote:Sorry, on my tablet unless I open the image in a new window I can't see the display. Now that I opened it I see that. I'm not accustomed to Forum software not already showing the entire image as a smaller size. Or if it does, it makes it a link generally so you click on the image and it opens the full image. I had to specifically hold and hover the item then open in a new page. Now I see the display.

After I posted that I would need three phase versions, I thought about that just calculating from the two that were available. Or even just one of the 120 volt legs. For the amount that I have cared about it, using the power company's website has worked. I have a kilowatt meter for 110 items.

I'll look them up. Thanks

No problem. The units work great. I could be mistaken about the power factor in the energy consumption though, now that I think about it. I know for a fact that to get the wattage, I have to divide by the P.F., because when the P.F. is <1.0, the displayed wattage doesn't match the Volts x amps on the display. I'd have to double check the energy to see if it is using just the real-wattage as part of the calculation (and ignoring the reactive-power), or if it is indeed using the total power.

Either way, in the case of my heat treat oven they're just resistive heating coils so the power factor is one on that. Now on anything in the building with motors, now we're going to need to know the power factor to calculate it but the truth is, this isn't launching Rockets or anything, it's not like if I miss by a few cents anybody cares. I'm sure they would be adequate just the way they are. Then just make a guess on power factor on something that's a inductive load.

Very true. Then it's pretty straightforward. kWh * 1.732 = Total energy consumption corrected for 3-Φ

BugHunter wrote:Sorry, on my tablet unless I open the image in a new window I can't see the display.

Funny, I didn't even see the meter there until you mentioned that. Normally on the pics I post if I click on them, they extend the bottom portion that is originally scrolled. I am not clear why on Oscar's pics, they do not have the scroll, but it may have to do with the actual size of the image. He always posts big images. I have noticed this on some of Oscar's other images he's posted to me, and missed stuff that was "off screen" with no scrolls, later to find out if I new the image by right mouse clicking to view, something will show up in the original that was not displayed on the forum.

I know Oscar is going to say, "I'm no phone expert", blah-blah-blah so I will just say that if one is not capable of knowing how to download and resize images before posting them to an online forum, it could help to go into your phone/camera settings and set the resolution to something smaller, like 1024x768 or even 800x600 as those images are most often big enough for people to see.

Also, keep in mind that if you post large images, they need to be downloaded by everyone, even people with slow internet connections. It's courteous to keep them smaller. Just sayin'...this is not to criticize Oscar, I'm fine with the images and will try to remember to view the images in my browser in case I'm missing something in the future. That is an added step that I may or may not do depending on the image.

Oh, I'm a phone expert alright. I'm plenty aware of how to play with pictures. The gist of it is that I dont like attaching pictures to posts, which if I'm not mistaken, is what auto-resizes them on this forum. I prefer to hot-link my pictures, which this forum does not auto-resize. I like to keep the images at full resolution that way if I need to go back and crop something out of it, I'm not stuck with a small portion that is all fuzzy due to already having resized and/or reduced the initial resolution. Too bad, you get what you pay for. What needs to happen is that this forum software needs to be re-vamped so it auto-resizes hot-linked pictures that are larger than a specified HxW resolution, so it fits into the tiny area that is reserved within the posts for pictures, which I am sorry to say, is pathetic. It's literally the only thing I don't like about this forum software. There is a lot of wasted space on the screen page at normal 100% scale. If the software could be adjusted to take full advantage of a modern screen, there would be much more screen area to post pictures also.

Just look at all that wasted space. And before anyone says it, zooming in or increasing the scale factor on the display settings does not work for obvious reasons. The side bar with the name of the person takes up a lot of space as well. If that could be moved up above the post like WW, then have to software expand the view to take advantage of a 16:9 screen, large pictures wouldn't be a problem.




Oh well.

Oscar wrote:Oh, I'm a phone expert alright. I'm plenty aware of how to play with pictures.
...
Too bad, you get what you pay for.

Sorry to hit a soft spot there, I didn't mean to.

You may have missed in my reply where I said:

TraditionalToolworks wrote:Just sayin'...this is not to criticize Oscar, I'm fine with the images and will try to remember to view the images in my browser in case I'm missing something in the future. That is an added step that I may or may not do depending on the image.

I think I should STFU and go do some welding...later.

TraditionalToolworks wrote:

Oscar wrote:Oh, I'm a phone expert alright. I'm plenty aware of how to play with pictures.
...
Too bad, you get what you pay for.

Sorry to hit a soft spot there, I didn't mean to.

You may have missed in my reply where I said:

TraditionalToolworks wrote:Just sayin'...this is not to criticize Oscar, I'm fine with the images and will try to remember to view the images in my browser in case I'm missing something in the future. That is an added step that I may or may not do depending on the image.

I think I should STFU and go do some welding...later.

Trust me, you didn't hit any soft spot, while it may not have been to criticize me, it clearly pertains to me. So I have to stand my ground. I can take the heat if you can.

Bottom line is, it's unfortunate that the way the software for the Forum works is that it does not automatically resize the image which, no offense but I've done a fair amount of PHP programming in my day and this is not rocket science. As a matter of fact, they may very well have forced it to not do so. I haven't used phpbb since I had a forum set up for my own family. I didn't much care for it then and it isn't growing me lately. I think this exchange illustrates the problem. Oscar posted an image that clearly had everything I needed right in the picture but unfortunately if I didn't view it a certain way on my system I didn't get to see what he was showing me. It's all good. But it does make a case for being a little bit more understanding of noobs because you just never know what somebody else is seeing. In my case, I am definitely no Noob to forums and I'm pretty versed in images on a website, but I have not been on a PHP BB Forum in a long time and I don't recall the last time I had to resize an image or manually open it to see the whole thing.

BugHunter wrote:As a matter of fact, they may very well have forced it to not do so.

BugHunter,

Guaranteed this is not the fault of phpBB, I have set them up and ran them and they didn't exhibit that problem.

The problem is that the admins here are not really admins, so they don't appear to really understand the backend. There really is nobody, AFAICT that actually can make changes to it, such as changing the actual PHP code. It's not gonna happen. The admins here are good people but moderator would be a better name for them.

These settings are not even at the code layer, the changes that would effect images are all a bunch of radio buttons and check boxes that an admin could change by clicking a mouse. But again, the folks that are here are not web developers.

I have worked on several web sites, and have implemented payment systems close to 20 years ago, but I work on mostly Embedded Linux, although I currently work on a robotic surgery platform that is using non-embedded systems. A few years ago I helped update and reconfigure the USA Table Tennis forums (I like to play TT). I think I still have admin access over there, but haven't been on that site for some time.