"As long as you can afford", might be the right answer here. But for the home hobby welder what cable length do you guys and gals feel is about right allowing good reach and movement around a garage? Length of electrode and earth please. Regards
mine are about 8 meters long. enough so welder doesn't have to be moved as its an oil cooled. a light welder wont need to be as long
Depends on the welder.... An Oxford oil cooled up to about 50ft longer if needed. A 7kg inverter maybe 15ft, 25ft max depending on access to weld area... My 140amp inverter about 10ft weld leads, mains input lead up to 100ft
if u are using long cables get heavy ones and put a connector on the end of the torch lead then a couple of meters of thinner cable on to the electrode holder much easier to manoeuvre the torch and u wont get voltage drop
As @brightspark said I have 8+8 meters long leads (8 on both electrode holder and ground clamp ) Many times I would like to shorten them up but I'm so glad that I've never done yet. Long leads are useful in many situation . I use to have always my welder as far as possible from where I'm working to try to limit dust ,fumes and sparks from been suck inside where the angry pixies and the technological stuff do the magic . Trying to get as much more life out of my welder. That's the main reason I do prefer to have long leads. The other ones are 1 I use those cables on my engine driven welder (heavy noisy piece of engineering) 2 my welder came with those cables. 3 where I can't reach with the mains I'll do with the lead. I will buy some welding cable and I'll put together a shorter set maybe in the future
I have several 10M lengths of cable from work and they generally snap next to the plugs so they are trimmed back after being taken home and new ends fitted and they go onto a 3 phase stick unit so power and drop is not an issue.
I should have done something to prevent that but I didn't yet Essentially put some heat shrink tube at the ends on a good 15cm length
I think I'm going to go with 4 meters on each, I guess if ever I do need to go longer I could get din connectors to extend it. A lot of useful answers there cheers guys. It's an old sureweld 140 transformer I've been giving some tlc too. Heavy but not heavy enough it can not be moved.
I get them from work for free because they are generally suspended at the plugs as the insulation is much thicker than the cable insulation, when you are on site there may be multiple lengths connected together and if possible they like them suspended or tied up to prevent people tripping on them, so supply isn't an issue, and at home they simply dont get the abuse they do on site.
