120V wirefeed wrecking house elec system?

[willysman]

I'm getting feedback on my house electrical system whenever I use my 120V Lincoln wirefeed welder. Loose grounds, UPS systems tripping, etc. I put a dedicated welder outlet right next to the incoming service disconnect at a 100A panel and still it dims the lights. I fear I'll need to put it on a generator to keep from wrecking electronics. Anyone else have that problem?

 

[Ray-CA]

I converted a 220/40amp outlet to a 110/20amp. No problems running my Lincoln here. The outlet is the only item on that particular circuit, (it was for a 220 electric dryer) but since we have a gas dryer, it worked out fine.

Ray

 

[Torque1st]

Check for an open neutral in your service from the pole.

 

[rsanter]

are you sure you are not overlaoding or close to overloading that circut?

I had bought a new house and set everthing up. I was getting a little pissed because within a month I had killed 3 computer supplies. then I realized that it was whenever I had done some welding that the computer would be off and the power supply would be dead.
did some checking and determined that the outlets in the home office were tied to the ones in the garage.
I installed a dedicades circut in the garage for using the table saw, welder, and such and never had a problem again
discovered I had the same problem in this house so I installed a new circut here too and no troubles

bob

 

[tfi racing]

Loose grounds,

????

 

[jerk_chicken]

Once I ran my welder on an extension cord from my living room window and every time the blue arc lit up the neighborhood at night, I looked up and saw the apartment lights flickering...until the breaker broke.

 

[Tscott]

From what I know, it could be a number of things. The first thing that comes to mind is either the service to your home is too small (i.e. the wire size is limiting the amount of current that can travel to your home) or the transformer that feeds your home is too small. However if this were the case you would probably see other large loads, such as your air conditioner compressor pump dimming your lights as well. You posted that you had a 100A main panel. Is that the size of your service? How old is you home?

Torque1st could be correct as well. There could be a problem with he utility neutral somewhere in the area. Depending on where you live it is not uncommon for a neutral to be on the ground and have no one notice. You may also want to check you homes ground rod and the connection to it.

Hope this will get you started.

Tom

 

[porschedude996TT]

I had a problem for years, when my Air Compressor would run, the florescent lights in the kitchen would flicker. Previous house never had a problem. The compressor is only a 2hp and it is running on a dedicated circuit that is within 3 feet of the breaker panel. I tried to fix it once thinking I had a poor ground at the panel and gave up. Recently while surveying for a new main panel installation, I found that there were a bunch of pig-tailed grounds from house circuits to the ground buss that ganged together and wire nuted. The panel didn’t have enough space for the quantity of grounds and neutrals. I decided to clean it up and use crimp collars instead of the wire nuts and the problem with the flicker went away.

 

[rinny_tin_tin]

I'm getting feedback on my house electrical system whenever I use my 120V Lincoln wirefeed welder. Loose grounds, UPS systems tripping, etc. I put a dedicated welder outlet right next to the incoming service disconnect at a 100A panel and still it dims the lights. I fear I'll need to put it on a generator to keep from wrecking electronics. Anyone else have that problem?

Its called back emf -- more commonly addressed as harmonic distortion, and especially results from commutating equipment, brush motors, especially arc welder - and includes switching power supplies- like your puter. Everyone has powerline distortion, but it becomes a real problem when the distortion % is large when compared to the service capacityr - that is, if your service is small, say 100A, or maybe 200A (depending what eq you are running).

Running your sys near max will also amplify dist problems, including running low power factor equipment, like older motors, etc

A bigger xfrmer may likely help. For truly clean power - you need a gen or what is commonly done is an mg set.