How long do you keep your welder on?

K

Kawickrice

Promoted Users
I am curious what others do. I usually try to turn off my welder until I am ready to weld.
I am welding in some trunk patches and I have to turn on the welder, then climb into trunk and get situated, do my welds then it takes awhile for me to climb out of the trunk to turn the welder off.
Will it hurt anything leaving the welder running for periods of time without striking an arc? I'm just curious.
 
you can leave it on for as long as you want. Most have a cooling fan which is activated for most of the time. fabrication shop I worked at, they would be on most of the day. Just need to ensure you turn off the bottle as the shield gas will most likely leak out.
 
Not sure what welder you are using but my Gas MIG stays on for as long as I need it to. The cooling fans keep it at the correct internal temperature and the only thing I may be losing is some Argon.

Just noticed these other guys type faster than I do. LOL
 
If you have an inverter power source--most of the small enclosure and relatively light weight machines today for MIG or TIG/SMAW set-ups--best to turn them on and leave them on. Popping a circuit board is more apt to happen when you turn them on. My POWCON used to do that and at that time before Miller bought them out-- it was $200/board from them only and you got to put them in yourself for that price.
 
Dave C. said:
you can leave it on for as long as you want. Most have a cooling fan which is activated for most of the time. fabrication shop I worked at, they would be on most of the day. Just need to ensure you turn off the bottle as the shield gas will most likely leak out.
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Some machines have better gas solenoid valves than others. I'm referring to how well they seal when they are supposed to shut the gas off.
I have one high end Esab inverter Tig (German made) that will hold the gas for days and another cheaper Esab (China) that will leak down in 10 minutes. You can tell by shutting the tank valve and watching the pressure gauge on the flow meter.
How much it leaks past? Probably not enough to matter much.
 
metalman said:
Some machines have better gas solenoid valves than others. I'm referring to how well they seal when they are supposed to shut the gas off.
I have one high end Esab inverter Tig (German made) that will hold the gas for days and another cheaper Esab (China) that will leak down in 10 minutes. You can tell by shutting the tank valve and watching the pressure gauge on the flow meter.
How much it leaks past? Probably not enough to matter much.
Click to expand...
my LN7 will leak out a whole cylinder over night............yeah i found that out lol. im pretty anal about shutting the valve now.
 
Leaving the welder on is no big deal....so long as no one is apt to mess with it. I would never leave the gas on if you are using gas. Simply because it is pricey and prone to leak down. It is also good practice to leave welders on for a while after using them....ones that fans run constantly more so. If you are really using one, it needs the fan time to cool down the internals. Even more important with the fancier multi process and tig machines with all the bells/whistles....like pulse.
 
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