Happy welding!

I almost couldn’t sleep – being excited (and also bit worried) about that new upgrade. Australian Post did their best this time and while stating that over-the-boarder deliveries might be delayed due to that Covid-19 nightmare, all worked out like a charm. Hallelujah! I wish Czech Post would one day be at least near this efficient!

My excitement was that high that I took a picture of the box while still in the car.

And than one in more detail .. to show the perspective.

Anyway, it still took couple days to wait for a weekend to start with a proper unpacking. I’ve asked Sebi to take care of that.

Major observation was that it is sort of half-weight of Serge’s Cernobyl-class welder. 🙂

It sort of makes sense as they were manufactured 30 years apart and also this little baby is the Welder-Inverter, where Serge’s is an electric transformer. Electric transformer-welders are considered old-school, while inverters are .. ahem modern. Saying that seems to be bit unfair and it really is as modern inverters apparently can’t match the old ones on their reliability which is given by their simplicity, but here I’ve slipped from our today’s topic. Our new baby in its all beauty follows.

Now, it may come as a surprise, but this baby comes with the 15Amps plug. I knew about this when buying the device and it was my main initial concern as our shed has none of these – it is all 10A pure even hosting some electricity demanding devices (pool pump, sauna, heater-invertor).

I read through several articles on this and such a socket can be mounted by a certified electrician only. Unfortunately average price for this in our area comes to ~$220, which would practically triple my expenses on having this working. Discussing this with Vlada first I’ve been told is whole shed runs on 50A fuse adding in 15A device is completely safe and it won’t need any special cables etc. … even more it is not going to burn. Having another session on this with Serge, he came with an ingenue idea of sanding off the plug to fit in the 10A socket – claiming that it wouldn’t be first time in his case.

50 Amps switch on the left

It took me a while to digest it and realise that it is not too bad idea at all. Still it fell bit sad to get a brand new welder and cripple it instantly. Here is where Andrew came in suggesting that when I shifted this far in my thoughts I can really mount that 15A power plug myself and ask an electrician to do a review some day later when there’s going to be some serious job to do.

Another discussion with Vlada resulted in a picking up a good place for the socket, where minimal cabling will be needed as well as it will make it well accessible from the bench. Picture below shows situation before.

Sebi helped a lot, drilling holes and screwing things in so not more than 60 minutes later we’ve ended up with a brand new 15A outlet!

I was really happy how all that worked out. It all looks like it was meant to be like that, what you think?

Meanwhile Sebi also explored additional tools which came in that box from welder and had some hard-core-Carnival-style fun.

He reminded me the Iron Man Mark I a bit :D.

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