So you want to be an electrician? hmmm... rant...

I bought a POWCON welder, made by Cyclomatic in San Diego, CA. It is a brute and a beast. It's a 300sm and it does stick, mig and tig. It's great!


Here's the problem...


I am not an electrician and do not claim to be one. I know enough to do most anything, but never went to school. I can wire 3 phase and I can do 3 way switches in single phase. etc etc... wiring does not scare me. I know how it goes. It is not hard to learn. I know what gauge wire to use for an application, and can figure out amp requirements for a circuit...

Regardless, I am not an electrician...


I buy this welder and I assume the guy knows his stuff. I figured he wired teh plug on the welder, because red was cut off flush, green/black/white was hanign long. He directly wired it to his 200 amp service. he put a white and black on the two hots, and the green on the neutral.

Now, I assume he wired it to the welder. He didn't. It's welding on 110v and not doing a good job, so I beg of him to stop and let me look. he stops, reverses the green for the white and tries again. welds slow and nothing is workign fine, so I tol him to stop, I'd buy the welder and just to stop. He does. So I bring it home, open it up, and low and behold...

BTW, I got it for a steal of a price.

It's wired for 230v/440v single-three... there are buss bars. the buss bars are in teh 230v position, but the ground green is obviously to a groudning post, red-white-black go to a junction and they seem to be in order. red and black are both wired to a hot jumper and the white(neutral) is the voltage coming back. The red lead from teh plug is cut short, they never hooked it up.

So, I put red to a hot, black to a hot on a 50 amp breaker, white to neutral and green to the grounding block. The welder runs decent but I can tell it has some troubles. I take it to my welding shop, they open it up and say, "some idiot reversed the ground and hot when they wired it."

$320 later, after components, it welds fine.

Moral of the story...


If you are not an electrician, please don't guess or pretend to be one. Even more-so, if I tell you I think you are wrong, don't judge or second guess me, but listen to me and let me teach you. If not, I will forever imagine your shoe when I am shooting the bottom of a urinal. You make me unhappy, you guesser of things you don't understand. I am not an expert, but I know... it makes me mad not to have the confidence to proclaim my righteousness in your presence.


I'm just saying...

Hope someone, someday will let up and let me speak without judging me.

It makes me so upset.

I'm thinking you got it for a steal because it wasn't working right. Would have been great if he HAD listened to you, got it wired correctly, it worked great, and suddenly he decided not to sell it after all. My dad would have said you were "talkin' when you should have been listenin'."

As far as him not listening to you, how did he know you were any smarter than he was?

BTDT. Sometimes what looks like a bargain ain't. I probably would have done the exact same thing.

That's why I like my miller mig welder, it has a plug, that senses what voltage it's getting, kinda wires itself!

Like you, only good electrician, bad arguer. Used to tell somebody, Bet me a weeks pay on this. Shuts em down fast. Put your money where your mouth is. Evens the score right now. Dave

Good point, if it wasn't running good, I probably wouldn't have had a chance to buy it for that price. I have seen those welders sell used for what he was asking plus the repair bill, which blew out the circuits in a board.

I do board repairs on everything from X-box to radio control helicopter controllers with some components being 1/4 the siz of your pinky fingernail with 8 pin face mount chips, up to large capacitors that are soldered through the board. Not a big deal, unless I don't have a schematic. So, I'll chock one up to being too mild.


I should have stopped him.

I just figured that he would have listened to me when I told him several times. I guess those that know it all will always know it all. I run across it all the time on a daily basis.

Regardless, it makes me mad. I seem to always be mad about something. Perhaps ignorance is bliss. If so, can someone hit me in the head hard enough that I end up mopping floors at McDonald's and feel happy again?

Or...

I'll just go out now and tig 2 beer cans together... That is pretty blissful!