They are just way too heavy to lug around. I have two, and usually I use them only when I know I will have no choice but to go a long distance from my power source to the work and want to limit voltage drop if possible. However 10 ga 100' cords are not cheap, and they are quite heavy. It will reduce the volyage drop as much as is reasonably possible. If you have a 10 ga extension cord, then by all means use it. My guess is you are over thinking this a bit. How good a welder you are and how much length of weld at that point would really be the deciding factor. At that point even under perfect conditions the material is really too heavy for that small machine, so the welds will be marginal at best. If we are talking about welding a heavy 1/4" strap hinge to heavy steel, then possibly not. If we are talking about a hinge to light 16 ga tube, then I'm sure it has plenty of power. Many don't even suggest using an extension cord, even if they do list suggested cord sizes if you actually read what hey have printed.Īs far if it's "good enough" to weld a hinge on a stall door, I'd really need a lot more information. That means nothing else plugged into the circuit except the welder. Some need even more power to reach maximum output, something like 25 amps of 115v input ( which to me is sort of pointless since the idea of a 115v machine is to be able to use it on "standard" circuits.) to obtain the max suggested settings. If you read the manual on the vast majority of these little machines, they rate them on a 20 amp dedicated circuit. If you are running of a 15 amp circuit you are already dropping the available power down. My guess is with a 10 ga cord it will be the 15 amp circuit that will be your biggest limitation. The 8 ga cords I see are usually 30 amp 230v ones for gensets to aux hook ups for homes. largest I typically see is 10 ga, and usually designed for large draw tools over longer distances. Not enough to matter, and finding an 8 ga extension cord designed for 110v power isn't easy. The lite gauge cord was there mostly to run a small light and the battery chargers, not try and power big draw tools like the air compressor and saws. It turned out when he unplugged the air compressor from my 2 10 ga 100' cords and plugged them into the customers 2 14 ga 100' cords, the compressor couldn't draw enough juice over that distance to run properly and would stall. However he wasn't paying attention to what cords he unplugged and pluged back in to which extension cords. Turns out the helper was playing musical cords when he needed to plug a different tool in because if he plugged into the power strip on the other cord, he'd trip the onboard breaker. It took me a bit to figure out what was going on. Some times it would seem to work just fine, then suddenly at other times it wouldn't. When drained, it would fire up no problem. All it would do is try to start, stall and then hum, so we'd quick shut it down. All of a sudden my air compressor stopped wanting to run when it tried to kick back on after the pressure dropped. I recently this summer ran into a very clear cut case of this happening. ![]() Understand that even with a heavy cord like a 10 ga one, you are going to have some voltage drop and this will effect the ability of that small machine to produce it's maximum output. 10 ga over 100 foot shouldn't be an issue, but I have no idea what the HF cords are like. Typically the answer is to go to a larger cord like you have to reduce the resistance and lower the drop in voltage that occurs. What you are describing is typically called voltage drop due to the resistance of the cord.
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