China welder woes

[iangreenhalgh]

I bought one of these Chinese spot welders:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Hand-held-Battery-Spot-Welder-Welding-Machine-for-Laptop-phone-Nickel-Fuse-/331657425476?hash=item4d3852b244:g:63oAAOSwQTVV98fq

Tried it, first weld, it blew the circuit breaker on my domestic ring main.

Now I notice it says on the advert that it requires a circuit breaker of 60A!

My ring main is 30A, as are most ring main circuits in Britain, so how the hell do they expect me to be able to use this welder?

 

[izeman]

It says 3kw output which should be no more than 15a. So 30a should be the max inrush current. 60a is way too much for the little 1.5sqmm wires. You could add a seperate circuit breaker for 60a and use 2.5sqmm wire - the same used for your stove/cooker.

 

[Monstarr]

Look up other topics about this.

Due to the very high inrush current they take while charging the caps they trip Type B circuitbreakers. (tolerant to 3x Inom)
You should get a type C circuitbreaker and try again. These have a 2-3 times higher tolerancy (5-10x Inom) for high inrush current than standard type B.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_breaker

 

[iangreenhalgh]

Cheers. I've ordered a 32A type C, hopefully that will fix the issue.

 

[999zip999]

Let us know.

 

[iangreenhalgh]

I shall. fingers crossed.

 

[robocam]

I'm trying to pick a welder. Why did you choose this over the 788H?

I bought one of these Chinese spot welders:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Hand-held-Battery-Spot-Welder-Welding-Machine-for-Laptop-phone-Nickel-Fuse-/331657425476?hash=item4d3852b244:g:63oAAOSwQTVV98fq

Tried it, first weld, it blew the circuit breaker on my domestic ring main.

Now I notice it says on the advert that it requires a circuit breaker of 60A!

My ring main is 30A, as are most ring main circuits in Britain, so how the hell do they expect me to be able to use this welder?

 

[irq]

Over here, in good old Germany Circuit Breakers for normal Houses are usually B Characteristics with 16Amps. I use exactly the same Spot Welder, with the B Breaker everything above 20-21 as Setting (dunno what exactly this Setting means...) made the Breaker to cut due to high inrush current. After some experiments i found 2 Solutions which work well with 0.15mm Nickel:

Using an Inrush Current Limiter which is basicly just a PTC, stopped the Breaker from cutting power up to a Setting of 25. With 22-23 Welds of 0.1mm are pretty good, nothing to complain.

After changing the Breaker to a 16A with C Characteristics no more problems up a Setting of whatever to 30.


Ghetto Workaround

did you try to connect the Welder through an extension powercord of 20-30m? Of course the cord needs to be unrolled if its on a barrel

 

[iangreenhalgh]

Thanks for the info.

I chose this welder because it was 30% cheaper.

I haven't tried the extension cable idea, but I think I have a long cable I could try.

Do you happen to know how many amps is usually needed for 0.15mm nickel? What about welding two or even three layers of nickel?

 

[irq]

Thanks for the info.

I chose this welder because it was 30% cheaper.

I haven't tried the extension cable idea, but I think I have a long cable I could try.

Do you happen to know how many amps is usually needed for 0.15mm nickel? What about welding two or even three layers of nickel?

if i remember right, there was something mentioned in the welders description that 0.1 nickel is the maximum. 0.15 works (thats what i use), but i dont think that much more will work. for 0.15 i used to set the welder to ~22-25 (still dont really know the effect of this setting, i just can guess that its the welding time or current regulation).