ground or neutral

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JDB3

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San Antonio, Texas
At a house that I am finishing on, the owner has a welder, that the male plug is a 3 wire 50 amp 125/250 volt. The panel that will feed the receptacle for it is a 4 wire system. My question is, should I connect to the neutral OR the ground bar at the panel (I have not seen the welder at this time) ? Thanks in advance.
 
JDB3 said:
At a house that I am finishing on, the owner has a welder, that the male plug is a 3 wire 50 amp 125/250 volt. The panel that will feed the receptacle for it is a 4 wire system. My question is, should I connect to the neutral OR the ground bar at the panel (I have not seen the welder at this time) ? Thanks in advance.
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That seems to be common around here to use that plug - only because they have or had an old welder that once had that end on it. It really should be a 50 amp 250 volt end. People will actually cut the 250 volt end off a new welder and put the 125/250 on it.

I don't get too concerned about it being the wrong receptacle. I would connect it to the EGC as that is the function it will serve. How likely is it they will ever plug a range into the receptacle in its location? Probably not that good, or anything else that requires a neutral.
 
kwired said:
That seems to be common around here to use that plug - only because they have or had an old welder that once had that end on it. It really should be a 50 amp 250 volt end. People will actually cut the 250 volt end off a new welder and put the 125/250 on it.

I don't get too concerned about it being the wrong receptacle. I would connect it to the EGC as that is the function it will serve. How likely is it they will ever plug a range into the receptacle in its location? Probably not that good, or anything else that requires a neutral.
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I agree!!!
 
I have to laugh, I guess I am one of the few who had had an old range out in the shop for preheating parts. Back in the day I got in trouble with mom for using her oven to heat up my motorcycle cylinder so I could replace the sleeve. Really, I thought the smell would dissipate before she got home from work :rotflmao:
 
JDB3 said:
.... the male plug is a 3 wire 50 amp 125/250 volt. ....
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If it is 3-wire 125/250, then it is a NEMA 10-50 plug. That makes it an ungrounded plug and uses the neutral. To wire it with a grounding conductor would be a violation, even if that is how the welder uses the other end of the cord. Wire the outlet with the neutral and don't worry about how it's getting used in the welder.
 
Rick Christopherson said:
To wire it with a grounding conductor would be a violation, even if that is how the welder uses the other end of the cord. Wire the outlet with the neutral and don't worry about how it's getting used in the welder.
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So you are suggesting to use the neutral to ground the welder frame, that is also a violtion and one that actually has the potential to injure.

I would not do that.
 
Rick Christopherson said:
If it is 3-wire 125/250, then it is a NEMA 10-50 plug. That makes it an ungrounded plug and uses the neutral. To wire it with a grounding conductor would be a violation, even if that is how the welder uses the other end of the cord. Wire the outlet with the neutral and don't worry about how it's getting used in the welder.
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I fully understand that, but...

jumper said:
I agree. A quick search says the correct receptacle and plug is only about 30 bucks. I would push for that.
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If I put in the 6-50 plug and come back some time later they will have a 10- 50 plug in its place or will have made some kind of adapter so the 10-50 will plug into it. The grounded conductors function is for equipment grounding whether or not the proper receptacle is in use or not.

I have this problem mostly garages at dwellings or in the shop on farms - neither is getting inspected most of the time and even if it does it is at inital construction and things will change later.

I had a newly constructed repair shop that wanted all the welder outlets to be 14-50 (4 wire). That is what they put on all of their welders, plasma cutters, or anything else that was intended to plug into these outlets. Only reason - they had a portable welder-generator with that receptacle on it and sometimes it was used to power some of the other equipment in the field. My opinion was why not make an adapter to use with the portable but all the machines already had the 14-50 ends on them at the time.
 
iwire said:
So you are suggesting to use the neutral to ground the welder frame, that is also a violtion and one that actually has the potential to injure.

I would not do that.
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This is cord-and-plug. You can't control what gets plugged into an outlet, but you do control whether the outlet is properly wired. If the property changes hands, that receptacle will still be there. Only this time the new owner has a proper need for a 10-50 receptacle and uses it. Now you end up with a situation of normal neutral current flowing on an uninsulated grounding conductor.

Unless it is a subpanel, there is no increase in risk for wiring the outlet correctly even if the customer will use the neutral as a ground. The conductor is serving the same task, but at least if it's insulated, it can do both jobs.
 
Rick Christopherson said:
Unless it is a subpanel, there is no increase in risk for wiring the outlet correctly even if the customer will use the neutral as a ground. The conductor is serving the same task, but at least if it's insulated, it can do both jobs.
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If it is connected to a service panel it is the same thing either way except for white or green insulation.

The OP did say this was a 4 wire system (sub panel).

Unless someone uses it for an electric range or clothes dryer what will ever be plugged in that requires a neutral and is otherwise code compliant?
 
kwired said:
The OP did say this was a 4 wire system (sub panel).
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The OP indicated it was a 4-wire panel, but that doesn't mean it is a subpanel. A main panel is 4-wire too.

Even if it is a subpanel, the risk to the user when the outlet is wired correctly, would be the couple of volts drop in the neutral between the main and sub. This is no different than having an older dryer on a subpanel.

Once the outlet is installed, you have no control on how it gets used. Remember, this is a residential setting. Grandma and Grandpa could show up for a visit, and now you have an RV plugged into a 125/250 receptacle that has no neutral.
 
Rick Christopherson said:
The OP indicated it was a 4-wire panel, but that doesn't mean it is a subpanel. A main panel is 4-wire too.

Even if it is a subpanel, the risk to the user when the outlet is wired correctly, would be the couple of volts drop in the neutral between the main and sub. This is no different than having an older dryer on a subpanel.

Once the outlet is installed, you have no control on how it gets used. Remember, this is a residential setting. Grandma and Grandpa could show up for a visit, and now you have an RV plugged into a 125/250 receptacle that has no neutral.
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I have seen that a few times. 99% of time receptacle in a dwelling location is supplied from service panel and the neutral or ground issue is a mute point as the only difference is whether or not the insulation is white, bare or green electrically it is same. The problem was always when someone makes an adapter for a 4 wire plug to a 3 wire plug and doesn't get it right (as far as neutral and ground need tied together, otherwise it is not right anyway) Seen this more often for makeshift generator cords than for RV's though. Again getting back to where I said "otherwise code compliant".

I will not use a raceway as the EGC in these installations in the rare event that someone uses it as a neutral but it is otherwise installed as an EGC. If they are installing a range or dryer it gets a 4 wire receptacle and new pigtail if necessary as it should.
 
If having an uninsulated conductor serve as a neutral is dangerous, what about SEU?

I mean I understand it is against code, but exactly how is it dangerous?
 
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Rick Christopherson said:
...

Even if it is a subpanel, the risk to the user when the outlet is wired correctly, would be the couple of volts drop in the neutral between the main and sub. This is no different than having an older dryer on a subpanel. ...
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The real risk is the possibility of an open neutral on the line side of the subpanel and having line or near line voltage on the case of the welder as measured to ground. This is one of the reasons the code does not permit new dryer circuits to be 3 wire circuits.
 
don_resqcapt19 said:
The real risk is the possibility of an open neutral on the line side of the subpanel and having line or near line voltage on the case of the welder as measured to ground. This is one of the reasons the code does not permit new dryer circuits to be 3 wire circuits.
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That is the reason for separating neutral from ground no matter what it feeds, nobody knows why we allowed ranges and dryers to be exceptions to this for so many years. My understanding is it started sometime during WWII to conserve copper. That may be understandable, why did it take until 1996 to change it?
 
kwired said:
That is the reason for separating neutral from ground no matter what it feeds, nobody knows why we allowed ranges and dryers to be exceptions to this for so many years. My understanding is it started sometime during WWII to conserve copper. That may be understandable, why did it take until 1996 to change it?
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I have heard that it was related to the copper issue in the war, but have never found any documentation of that. As far as to why it took so long...there was no body count. It was proposed many times before it passed and was rejected because the submitters did not substantiate a hazard in the field.
 
jumper said:
This could be 300 posts with these statements. :)
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I never understand how something can be perfectly safe, and then with the stroke of a pen, people start yelling that "you're going to kill somebody"

And sometimes it works the other way around.

When I used to fly a lot av gas was expensive. So lots of guys got a STC (suplemental type certificate) for auto gas. Well most times it was just a paper modification to the aircraft. Sometimes not, sometimes it was just a check to see that certain fuel system components were made out of the correct materials. (O-Rings mostly)

So anyway this modification to your "paper airplane" was kinda expensive. So I checked to see what was involved for the Cherokee I was flying, made the checks, and just burned the auto gas without buying the expensive piece of paper. Well I was in my 20's and opened my mouth about it. You should have heard the talk about how I was irresponsible and dangerous,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Like somehow that thousand dollar piece of paper was going to have an effect on how the airplane flew

The funniest thing was people telling me how if I crashed, I was gonna get sued. First off I was 20 something and "judgement proof", and my theory was if I crash "gettin sued" was the least of my worries. (The Agricultural Sprayers I hung around with thought I was a "hoot" :D )

As Shakespeare once said, ?A coward dies a thousand deaths, a hero only one."
 
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