For beginners and self-taught welding.
When I bought a welding inverter, connected the welding cables and started welding my first seams and structures, you notice one thing.
Those wires that came in the kit - the holder wire and the ground wire for grounding, are just short for comfortable work. The average length of these wires is no more than 1.5-2 meters.
Also complete with the inverter, these cables come in a poor-quality plastic sheath instead of the rubber. The manufacturer, not all, but the majority, simply saves on everything. They just won't last long.
Therefore, most beginners think about lengthening or replacing these cables with longer ones. But there are doubts whether this can be done, whether such tuning will damage the device itself.
Everything is fine, you can and even need to do this. With the factory holder and mass, you will often have to move the device from place to place, and sometimes hang it up during welding.
I'll show you a simple formula on how to calculate how much you can lengthen, and I'll give a couple more tips for a beginner.
The required cable cross-section for inverters of different power
80-100 amp inverter: need 6mm square cable.
120 amp inverter: 10mm square
180 amp inverter: 16mm square
200 amp inverter: 25mm square
We know the required section, it remains to calculate how many meters are permissible for our inverter.
The formula itself:
L max = Sk / k, let's decipher this: L max is the total length of cables, holder and mass cable
Sk is the cable cross-section itself
k is a coefficient, for inverters of 200 amperes and less, this number is calculated so the power of the inverter is divided by 100. Let the inverter be 160 amperes, divide by 100 and get a factor of 1.6
Now we know everything, let's try to calculate.
Let the inverter be 180 ampere.
Substitute the data into the formula and get the result of 9 meters. Let me remind you this is the total length of the cable for the grip and for the ground. Divide 9 meters into grip and mass as it is convenient for us for work.
Let's calculate for you for convenience
Inverter 80-100 Amp: 6 meters of cable
120 amp inverter: 8 meters of cable
Inverter 180 Amp: 9 meters of cable
Inverter 200 Amp: 12-13 meters of cable
These are their recommendations for the maximum cable length. To be guided by them exactly to the meter, I don’t know. I did a little more than the maximum possible. It's okay, I've been cooking for more than one year.
So feel free to extend with separate normal cables. And let the factory ones be in the stash.