Hi all,

just a question, i need to do some welding on my vw, however, my garage has no power points seeing as i rent it from the council. What i'm after is a generator to power some tools, but mainly my welder. What i need to know is, what size generator would power, say, a clarke 100e mig welder? The info i get is that its 230volts, 13 amp 3 pin plug domestic supply, but not what KVa it uses, while generators say what KVa or wattage out put they are, but not if they would run a welder. See my problem :?

Any info would be appreciated, however, generators that require a crane to put them in place are a little out of my price bracket.... :lol:

Cheers, Andy. :d

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I can't give you an authoritative answer, merely a few pointers - apologies is you already know all of this...

https://www.hss.com/c/1014510/Welder-Generators.html 

If you buy an underpowered generator then you will spend a lot of time waiting for it to reset after cutting out. Hiring one for a day to verify what spec. you need might be worthwhile.

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Hi tman,

think that you may be over estimating the size of generator needed. I found out what it uses by using a meter thing that you plug in and then plug the appliance into and then it tells you all sorts odd things, especialy how much power you are using.It was a work college who brought it in after i had a conversation with him about this problem. So, pluged the welder to it and then did some test welds at diffrent settings. It turns out that the clarke 100e uses at minimal setting about 900watts and at maximum, which is suppose to be using 0.8 wire on 5mm plate which i hope i don't have to do on my vw :shock: , 2850 watts. So, i should only need to use the 2 to 3 lower settings at most and therefore a 2800watt generator should be enough for everything i need to do :d
This size of generator is a lot cheaper than a 5kw to 6kw, by a very looooooonngg way.
Anyway, just thought you would like to know.

Andy
:wink:

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