Electronics

Chris · Guest

I have bought a TIG welder that will run off UK 240 volt single phase 50
hertz AC supply, but on full power can draw up to 50 amps. I want to wire
this off the house incoming mains distribution board, to a spur in my
worksshop, about 30 feet away. The mains supply from the road is on a 100
amp fuse to the meter. The meter then feeds straight to a fuse switch with
an 80 amp fuse in it. If I can get an extra pair of tails into the outlest
of this switch fuse i was going to run armoured cable to a 60 amp switch
fuse in the workshop, with the welder hard wired into that. Can anyone see
a problem with this? I live in the sticks, and although the mains is fused
100 amp the incoming armoured cable form the pole looks quite thin...

What core size armoured do I need to be looking at? BTW, a pic of the
welder load plate is at ftp://ftp.chriswilson.tv/mig/mig.jpg

Thanks.

David C. Partridge · Guest

Without going through the full voltage drop and diversity calculations which
you should be able to find in the wiring regs, I would estimate that you'll
need 10mm or 16mm conductors (which is probably quite a bit fatter than your
incoming mains supply which is intended to handle domestic draws, not the
industrial type of draw you are talking of). Given that, I strongly
suggest that this should be surveyed and installed by a qualified
electrician.

This is particularly so now as rules in the UK have changed, and you are not
allowed to do your own electrical wiring any more (or if you do it must be
checked and certified by a "competent person" as defined by the law).

In this particular case, I would suggest that you either:

a) Get a qualified electrician to do it.

b) Get the books and do the calculations properly to determine if this is
viable given your incoming supply and only do it if so, and then get it
checked by a qualified sparks (preferably get one to check your proposal b4
doing the work).

David

neon · Joined: 25 Feb 2006 Posts: 570

what you want to do is against any laws in the whole world the problem is that you could brown up your house and if the power co. find out they can seek damages from you. solution simple contact your power co. and they will supply or try to supply the feed for a fee. then everybody is happy. sometimes it is not possible to do that because of present loadind and distribution. 30 ffet ends up to be 60 feet total 0 AWG =10.180' /ohm. you need 6 ohms worth of it. thats 19 pounds of the stuff 6AWG 2.531"/OHMS you need 25.5319 ohms worth of it . you can see where the dissapation is.

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