Welding Lead Wire Size

Note that welding polarity does not affect the size of cable needed.

Welding lead wire size.

The important specs to go by when choosing the appropriate wire that is suitable for your applications are the wire gauge amp voltage rating and the length needed. So size your extension cord wire for minimum voltage drop. American wire gauge awg ratings for welding cable sizes. The welding cable size chart below includes the wire gauge length of the wire diameter weight technical details and color of available.

These cables are used by professional welders for secondary voltage resistance welding leads and as a power supply for welding tools and applications that. Other charts are available from cable manufacturers and welding reference books. For determining proper welding cable size you need to add together the full lengths of the electrode cable and the work cable. These charts show.

Thus a welding cable size of 2 awg 625 30 has a total cross sectional area of 2 awg made from 625 strands rated at 30. However this is improper terminology as the ground lead only applies to the primary side of the welding circuit i e the incoming power cable. Note these last two items are often incorrectly referred to as the ground cable and ground clamp. Welding machines require their rated input voltage to maintain output welding amperage and duty cycles.

Awg ratings for welding cable size will have three numbers that give the rating for the cable overall the number of strands and the rating for the strands themselves. Welding cable and battery cable are similar in their applications but differ in terms of their construction allowing for one type of cable to be more useful than the other in certain unique situations. It includes the power source electrode cable electrode holder or tig torch or wire feeder and gun electrical arc work cable and work clamp. For efficient performance the nfpa 70 national electrical code 210 19 a note 3 recommends branch circuits be sized to prevent voltage drops exceeding 3 percent.

Figure 5 is an example of a chart for selecting the proper welding cable size. Figure 3 illustrates the welding circuit. Wire cable your way offers a wide selection of flexible copper welding cable at the lower prices around sold by the foot so that you can get exactly what you need without wasting dollars.