Lightning in a Bottle

So when I ordered my welder I expected that it'd be shipping out of some warehouse in Cheese Lake, WI or something, rattling around in the back of some truck that probably needed to make a layover in Florida before heading west. But, as it turns out, Ahp is actually headquartered in South SF not even 50 miles from home sweet home.

In other words, the welder showed up today. Nice.

First things first, I need to be able to plug this thing in. Back when I moved in I noticed that the dryer outlet was a 30a 240v surface mount receptacle that looked like it was made of bakelite somewhere around the mid 40s. It was also a NEMA 10-30R, which is considered obsolete due to technically not having a ground conductor (and I say technically, because it's a hot-hot-neutral configuration, and the neutral is just a straight shot back to the main panel where the neutrals and grounds are all bonded together on the same bus bar anyway).

Of course that also meant that there wasn't a run of 10/3 romex back to the main panel, and instead I only had 10/2 to work with. That essentially ruled out using the more modern 14-30R receptacle, so instead I settled on the 6-30R and decided to call the neutral a ground (which made sense, as it was a bare copper conductor in the romex anyway).

Fast forward to today, and I need to adapter for my welder which comes wired with a NEMA 6-50P connector. This is when I discover that literally nobody on the planet ever uses 6-30, and so the 6-50R to 6-30P adapter costs $50 because it's a low production item. What doesn't cost $50 is a 6-50R to 10-30P adapter and a new 10-30R receptacle.

Out with the new, in with the old. Kind of a bummer, I like the look of the 6-30R.

Now these high current connectors are slightly peculiar in that they're most commonly mounted with the ground or neutral pin oriented at the top, which is the opposite to the way I'm holding the 6-30R in this picture, and to how the 10-30R is installed. The reason for this is that if I installed it in the normal way, the cord would run into my tool chest.

It may look weird, but it works much better this way.

Anyway, I also discovered why welder extension cables are so popular.

I suppose I'll be welding over on this side of the car hole. Not the worst fate, I guess.

After all that, does the machine make the pixies extra angry?

Oh it does, it does indeed.

Now I just have to go order up some consumables and some chunks of practice metal to weld on and I'll be making sparks in no time!