Mini 110v welder

[tjhowell63]

Has anyone used one of those 110v mini 200A stick welders?
I mostly do MIG welding, but on occasion, I run into an old piece of pipe or some old steel brackets that have popped off and it would be handy to just have a very inexpensive stick welder with a small footprint. I just built an addition to my workshop and don't want to fill it up too quickly. My eyes are already looking at larger floor model tools.

 

[Gary Fowler]

I dont think you can get 200 amps out of a 110v inverter welder. I think about 140 is the limit and you likely will trip a 20 amp breaker with that. Many of the small lunch box sized inverters with run 110/220. You have to hook them up to 220v to get the full potential of 200 amps. You will also be very limited on duty cycle at the full 200 amps, most likely in the 10-15% range.

I have an Everlast combo machine that is Plasma/TIG and Stick that has 200 amp capacity with stick and it welds very smooth on 220v. I tried it on 110v and it tripped my breaker at 100 amps stick ( not even full amps).

 

[Mark @ Everlast]

Has anyone used one of those 110v mini 200A stick welders?
I mostly do MIG welding, but on occasion, I run into an old piece of pipe or some old steel brackets that have popped off and it would be handy to just have a very inexpensive stick welder with a small footprint. I just built an addition to my workshop and don't want to fill it up too quickly. My eyes are already looking at larger floor model tools.

You'd need close to a 50 or 60 amp 120V breaker to be able to support 200A on 120V.
Most dual voltage welders cap the output any where between 90 to 150A depending upon the process.

You can take a look at the operating output. Say 200 Amps, and look at the average rated voltage at that amperage, which for something like stick is 28V output. Multiply 200A X 28V and you get wattage. That would be 5600 watts. Ok, now on the input, you know you are putting in roughly 120V. So, you can't get more power out than you put in, but through the magic of transformers, you can step the power to offer less volts with more amps (as in a welder). So you divide the 5600 watts by the 120V. That's a nice round 47 Amps.

You loose some efficiency that way to heat, so not every amp input is available in the equation. So you'll loose about 15% in the process if your lucky. So, then you would take that into account and add another 7 amps. You probably are cutting it close at that. To get to that amperage with a stick welder, you'll easily need a 60 amp 120V breaker.

 

[California]

Same math, simplified like how we used to do Carpenter math:
You have 120 volts 20 amps at the wall outlet.
You want 24 volts to weld with, that's 1/5 of the wall voltage.
And volts x amps = the same watts output at the welder, as watts input from the wall. Regardless of what voltage we are talking about, watts always = watts.
So at 1/5 the voltage out, you have 5 times the amps. That's 100 amps.
Take off a little for losses, now 90 amps. And that's the realistic output rating for any welder that will run off a common wall outlet. Anything rated higher, that's advertising magic.

 

[Gary Fowler]

I have a very good 120V MIG machine that can run very hot using .030 wire, but I doubt a 120V stick welder can produce enough amps to burn hot with anything larger than 3/32" electrodes.