Building a Welding Cable

use at least 25mm sq flex cable you can buy welding specific cable it will have a high tempreture rating and good thick insulation to protect from mechanical damage you should be able to use the old connections gun and plug to go into the machine if it si a lug termination get the correct lug when you buy the cable, hope this helps :)

You may be better off using an extension cord for the machine, rather than making a longer gun cable. I'm not an electrician, but on a small machine like yours, there may be a power loss using a longer cable that wouldn't be noticed if using an extension cord. Also, keep in mind that the drive roller will have to push more wire through the longer cable.

Electricians may clobber me on this one, but I look forward to their input.

3m shouldn't be a problem as long as you use a nice big cable 25mm or larger.

yeah its one of the old well I could move the mountian or I could just get closer to it....

Its only a small welder why not move the welder rather than extending the welding cable unless you are working inside a restricted area. Other wise 25mm sq is OK for that machine.

If that is a MIG machine running gassless wire 3 meters is the longest torch you should use or you will have feed problems.

How did you propose to build a new Cable!!?

Garth

The time and effort you will spend on this project will far excede the cost of buying a new gun. You can pick up a 15' 180amp for around $140 u.s. Try E-bay. I would not run anything more than 15', unless you enjoy spending half of your time fixing birds nests. Figure this; everytime you knot it up, thats aprox. 20' (or more) of wire thats trashed. Keep to 15' or under and move your welder closer to your work. I have my small miller 135 welder ratchet strapped to a dolly with my gas bottle and Its quite handy to have when you need to move around.

I know the welder you have and I believe it is a MIG type gun. This is way different than a stick welding cable in that it has the wire liner and argon hose built into the cable. The fact that you are using no gas does not usually change the wire feed cable it just means you are not using the argon hose that is built into most cables. The difference between a no gas (flux core) and a gas back up (flux core or bare wire MIG) is made into the actual welding wire and the type flux or lack of it contained in the wire its self determines whether a backing gas is needed. I do not know of any way you can splice the hose and liner part of this set up. They make the lined cable in 15, 20 and 25 ft lengths for most MIG machines or you can special order it in longer length. Please keep in mind that on a small welder the wire feed motor may not be strong enough to push the wire out on a longer cable as well. The welder I had was so light and being it ran on 115 volts it was far easier and cheaper for me to build a 30 amp, 10 AWG extension cord and move the welder around than to buy a new wire feed cable and liner. I only used this welder for very thin stainless steel and mild steel and it was useless on anything much thicker than 3/16" plate. The welder will run well after it is started and an warms up the wire and base metal but I was plagued by cold starts with thicker metal. I Finally traded it off for a Lincoln suit case wire feed that hooks up to a normal stick type welder. The suitcase wire feed is the type that tank builders use in the Field and will run on CV or CC type current and will run flux core or bare wire with or without backing gas at higher amperages needed for more industrial situations. I would recommend you talk to your local welding shop before you buy anything other than a big extension cord and see what is available for you particular welder model. I suggest this because you could get into a situation that I call a "dry water run" and these nearly always result in me wasting money on something that won't work.

pipewelder

I have a 120V Clarke that uses shielding gas and bare wire. I also use an extension cord to put it closer to the work. I have hung it from an over head crane and lowered it inside feed trucks to repair cracks. The low duty cycle makes for slow going but it works. The hatch was too small to drop a larger machine in to make the repairs and we (me) did not want to cut in and access holes to feed the gun and leads through the side.