Pro Power for Welding

[ZeusDriver]

Being juvenile, I was going to title this "Pro Power Sparks". But I knew some would find that triggering, and I am already skating on thin ice here.

I am not surprised that the 20A 120V outlets on my truck (no 220 outlets) would power a welder. My surprise has more to do with the tiny, inexpensive welder I got from my favorite place to buy cheap stuff. I was once a competent welder, but my eyesight is not what it used to be. Finally, I found a helmet that works better, and used a friend's extremely nice Miller ($5000 or so) as a MIG welder to weld up a trailer recently. Even it could be plugged into 120, and worked so much better than the equipment I used to weld with that It made me feel like a welding hero.

But:
Turns out this little cheap inverter works really well too. By sticking the wire once (which it is not at all prone to do) I was able to trip the Lightning's circuit breaker, but mainly, it just kept on trucking. This little welder (Titanium Easy Flux) makes it easy to weld anywhere in my yard, without the need to find a huge extension cord. I have also powered a compressor for some spray painting. And I have the bed to use as a work bench.

There are, I'm sure, loads of you who are well aware of the capabilities of Pro Power, but I have used my truck mainly as a daily driver and for towing a boat, not as a "work truck"... so the utility of Pro Power is new to me. Makes me think I should start up a handyman business: "Feeble old fart with bad eyesight will fix your stuff!!"

Do you have interesting uses for Pro Power?

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[SpaceEVDriver]

Some light jackhammer work driving fence posts.

 

[Schupbach]

My boat is stored in a yard about 1/4 from the nearest electrical outlet so it works perfectly to run my buffer Very handy

 

[Heliian]

Grinder, air compressor, battery charger, a bunch of office equipment, vacuum pump, lighting.

Havent tried my 110v welder yet though. PPO is very handy when you're handy.

 

[ZeusDriver]

Grinder, air compressor, battery charger, a bunch of office equipment, vacuum pump, lighting.

Havent tried my 110v welder yet though. PPO is very handy when you're handy.

Cool. Last time I charged my old Durango, I ran an extension cord, without even thinking that the Lightning would have been easier. I am Pro Power noob.

I put in a second panel (a sub panel) when this house was recently built, to power a few essential services (all 120V) I was thinking about a Lightning (etc) at the time, but didn't have one, and the inlet to the panel is 240. Now I have the Lightning, but it does not have 240 out. I'll have to think about how I might make the panel so it can be powered by either 120 or 240.

I was casually thinking about putting a lathe/milling machine combo in a small trailer connected to my Lightning. Travel to high schools and teach kids how to machine stuff.

A person might ask me: "Have you not heard about portable generators?" But there is carrying the gas, running out of gas, the carb gumming up from infrequent use, the leaks, the noise, the fumes, the need for securing the thing (and the Molotov Cocktail) for travel, etc.

 

[ZeusDriver]

Some light jackhammer work driving fence posts.

How cool is that?!
Impact can be a cool thing. I once had to cut through a concrete driveway, and used an air tool of the size usually used for cutting through exhaust pipes, etc. Went through the concrete like butter.

 

[hturnerfamily]

it has certainly changed Camping options, not requiring the typical 'must stop overnight at a campground for power', or otherwise being able to actually power the Camper WHILE traveling...and everything works, even the overhead air conditioner. Sweet. Stay at a campground, stay at a Walmart, stay in the wilderness... it doesn't matter.

This does not require 240v power, as most campers are 120v 30amp, but it is STILL an option: we upgraded ours to 240v. Generally, though, the 120v outlet in the bed is plenty.

 

[CD4TNF]

I used the ProPower outlets for camping purposes. I have a pop-up camper on the truck bed. I used a electric ceramic heater plugged into the ProPower outlet to keep warm. Nice and dry heat.


Other normal stuff. Heated up water with the hot water kettle. Charger phones and devices. Plugged in a lamp to light up the place.


Glad you had good welding success. The only article I've read about using the Lightning to weld was a Motortrend article. They had poor results. There's been a few reports on the forum here that have been plus and minus. Interesting you're experience is the quality of the welding machine matters.


It's kind of interesting that the welding use case for ProPower Onboard is more of a rarity. It's more common to see it get used for a backup generator V2H setup.

 

[Rickab99]

Cool. Last time I charged my old Durango, I ran an extension cord, without even thinking that the Lightning would have been easier. I am Pro Power noob.

I put in a second panel (a sub panel) when this house was recently built, to power a few essential services (all 120V) I was thinking about a Lightning (etc) at the time, but didn't have one, and the inlet to the panel is 240. Now I have the Lightning, but it does not have 240 out. I'll have to think about how I might make the panel so it can be powered by either 120 or 240.

I was casually thinking about putting a lathe/milling machine combo in a small trailer connected to my Lightning. Travel to high schools and teach kids how to machine stuff.

A person might ask me: "Have you not heard about portable generators?" But there is carrying the gas, running out of gas, the carb gumming up from infrequent use, the leaks, the noise, the fumes, the need for securing the thing (and the Molotov Cocktail) for travel, etc.

In this case is might be just as easy to run out of electricity, not sure

 

[ZeusDriver]

Interesting you're experience is the quality of the welding machine matters.

Yes, definitely. The Miller was used in my old shop in Atlanta, plugged into an ordinary 120V 15A outlet. It was the machine that got me thinking about the utility of a very small welder. (Its owner, a sculptor, would usually plug into 240.) The Miller could do TIG, MIG, stick and flux core and had remarkable digital controls for setting it up. The tiny machine I plugged into my Lightning was $149, and worked amazingly well. I'd think that the 240 outlets (which I don't have) could power a pretty versatile welder for heavier welding. (Most of what I have done is on 1/8 and 3/16 steel.) Inverter welders are much better for starting and keeping an arc going, I think, than old transformer-based ones.

 

[ZeusDriver]

In this case is might be just as easy to run out of electricity, not sure

I imagine I could also teach a little welding, and still not run out of battery, depending upon how far I travel. The welder is generally 19 Volts and 70 amps, so less than 1400 watts, but only for 20 seconds at a time. Over the course of a one-hour class, I might use, at very most, half that as an average, so say 700 watt-hours... a rounding error vs the Lightning's 100,000 watt-hour battery. A milling machine-lathe combo can peak at 600 watts, but is more apt to be running at half that when cutting a small piece of aluminum or steel... so if it is running for half the class, we'd use 150 watt-hours.

50 years ago (!!!???) I taught both of those subjects at a trade school, in conjunction with teaching motorcycle mechanics (so I was not cranking out certified welders, or real machinists -- just people who could weld up a cracked aluminum case or bore a cylinder). It was fun to do... fun enough that I would probably do it on a volunteer basis now. Although I have too many projects already... at least one of which is driving me into poverty, and insanity.

Beginning to ramble incoherently:
20 years ago, I coached a robotics team of 4th and 5th graders, who designed a robot to follow a line on a table and move some stuff around. The line following was roughly what a Tesla would attempt to do many years later. The kids just did it better. My Tesla tried to kill me twice. The kids never tried.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

Even my Lincoln arc welder (if the truck could provide the 50A necessary) run at its maximum duty cycle (20% at 225 amps, 25 volts) wouldn’t pull more than about 1.1 kWh in an hour of welding.

People don’t seem to realize how energy intensive it is to move vehicles around.

 

[MDErnst]

Yes, definitely. The Miller was used in my old shop in Atlanta, plugged into an ordinary 120V 15A outlet. It was the machine that got me thinking about the utility of a very small welder. (Its owner, a sculptor, would usually plug into 240.) The Miller could do TIG, MIG, stick and flux core and had remarkable digital controls for setting it up. The tiny machine I plugged into my Lightning was $149, and worked amazingly well. I'd think that the 240 outlets (which I don't have) could power a pretty versatile welder for heavier welding. (Most of what I have done is on 1/8 and 3/16 steel.) Inverter welders are much better for starting and keeping an arc going, I think, than old transformer-based ones.

Thought you might find this thread interesting.

 

[ZeusDriver]

Thought you might find this thread interesting.

Sure... ruin my day. If my business depended on the PPO working, I would be really disappointed when it does not, when running well inside its rating.

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