Welding

[WNYBill]

I am going to do some electric arc welding on a large piece of farm equipment. Can I safely stand or kneel on the piece of equipment while I am welding it? The only electrical charge is between the rod and the ground..... right?

 

[old]

As long as you have a good clean ground yes you can BTDT many times when I built a dump truck out of a road tractor

 

[WNYBill]

I have a piece of rubber cow mat to stand/kneel on and dry gloves too.

 

[Bob]

(quoted from post at 10:11:11 08/20/19) I am going to do some electric arc welding on a large piece of farm equipment. Can I safely stand or kneel on the piece of equipment while I am welding it? The only electrical charge is between the rod and the ground..... right?

It's not a bad idea to have someone around while you do this, capable of cutting the power, on the odd chance that something would do amiss and the welding current from the "stinger" or it's cable would flow through you to the large metal object you will be sitting/crawling on.

 

[old]

Dry good heavy gloves are always a good idea. I do not know if this it true but an old guy who has long since passed told me if one does not wear gloves when welding it promotes arthritis. I know I do not wear gloves often when welding and i do have arthritis problem in my hands. Also as Bob said good idea to have some one close by just in case you get between the ground and the stinger and get zapped so the person and shut the welder down before you end up 6 foot under which can happen fast with the high current that is there with a welder

 

[dr sportster]

Electricity can take strange paths. I would sit on a linemans blanket. But then I have a linemans blanket. Twice I got rapped while welding both unexplained . Once off the workpiece while holding a square and once off the bench.

 

[Adirondack case guy]

The current from a welding electrode is not going to kill you. I have been zapped many a time installing a new electrode into the holder when I didn't have a pair of gloves available.----------Loren

 

[MarkB_MI]

The voltages in typical arc welding aren't that high, EXCEPT when you break your arc and inductive kickback will cause the electrode voltage to spike. You can get shocked then if you happen to be touching the electrode or maybe you have bad insulation around the stinger cable. If any part of your body is touching the work (which tends to be the rule rather than the exception), you need to be careful not to come in contact with anything "hot". Don't worry about it too much, it's self-correcting behavior!

 

[old]

Yes the current can kill you but you have to get it threw your body is such way it goes from say arm to arm so it passes threw your heart. Takes only a milliamp to kill and a welder puts out many times more then a millionth of an amp but it is all how one gets shocked.

 

[Dusty MI]

Side note.
You can get sun burnt from arc welding.

Dusty

 

[old]

I learned that the hard way by doing some welding under a 1969 Chevy pickup and paid dearly for it.

 

[Adirondack case guy]

I have done a lot of work in live breaker boxes and gotten my share of shocks there also, and have found over the years that I can often light floresent bulbs that don't want to light or are flickering. I have also lit some of them by just touching the pins on the ends. I guess my body is a battery.------Loren

 

[Janicholson]

I know you know this, but a Milliamp is 1/1000 of an amp, 100 to 200ma through the heart is considered deadly. Jim

 

[old]

Either way but one can kill a person if they know how with a simple d cell flashlight battery

 

[Bob]

(quoted from post at 11:49:05 08/20/19) The current from a welding electrode is not going to kill you. I have been zapped many a time installing a new electrode into the holder when I didn't have a pair of gloves available.----------Loren

"The current from a welding electrode is not going to kill you."

Just for giggles, GOOGLE "killed by arc welder".

Apparently, there's some guys that would disagree with your statement "The current from a welding electrode is not going to kill you."

(IF they could.)

 

[old]

Well Bob I'll never believe that. I know for a fact the amps are well over the kill number and the volts are also. I have never talked to a guy who held the ground in one hand the the stinger in the other hand and lived to talk about it

 

[Roger Tomfohrde]

Two things come to mind to stay safe. A local farmer was welding in a silage wagon and someone had to shut the power off to get him out, don't remember the exact story but the corn silage was too wet and it completed the path. The other I remember well..I was teaching a new guy on the job in a welding place that made railings and spiral staircases. We were setting up a corner rail with small welded on plates so it could be dissembled. I was holding a framing square to keep everything square when the wire feed stuck in the tip because he held it too close. The ground for the setup usually was a flat strip of metal on the floor connecting several welding tables and the main unit was on a track so you could extend the power unit out to all the tables. Well to do the job we moved the ground to the new railing and when the tip stuck I reached up to use the normal table to help stand and I also had the other on the new rail.Well the kid turned wiggled the wire loose and hit the scrap area we used to test the gun on that same table and I completed the path as he energized it. The guy doing cutoff said it sounded like a head of beef that got hit with and electric stun gun as I was not standing yet. Felt a little worse than the last new electric fencer dad bought. I do not want to do it again as i am getting too old for that happy go lucky stuff and do not like taking any chances any more. That was all before I learned about electrical shock in HVAC classes.

 

[john in la]

[b:654c4848f0]I have never talked to a guy who held the ground in one hand the the stinger in the other hand and lived to talk about it[/b:654c4848f0]

At what point in a normal welding operation is this scenario suppose to happen????

 

[mtny]

I was shocked once or twice due to water , seemed mild . Last night 6 of us were rebuilding a high pressure oven plenum while welding and crawling all over it . Not saying it can't happen but in 30 years I've only got it from moisture .

 

[Keith Molden]

If you touch the electrode just after you have been welding, you're gonna find out real quick how hot it can be. Hot burn not electrical burn. If you're worried about getting shocked a little then you'd better take it to someone who know what to do and let them weld it. I've been a welder since 1966 and do not know of any welder who has never gotten shocked, so yes you can stand. sit or lay on the base metal while welding it. If you get a tingle then check your ground, it's probably not making good contact. Oh by the way, make sure you have a clean not painted place as close to where you're gonna weld to put the ground, that current will flow through bearings if there are any between the ground and the electrode, welding them solid. Believe me or not, it's your money to spend for new ones after you find out that piece of equipment won't move after you're done.

 

[Welding man]

I guess I should have been dead at least 3000 times. I have stood in water, snow ,mud up to my knees and welded for hours. Wet gloves and get shocked every time I changed a rod. Laid flat on my back under a D-9 Cat and welded in the rain all day with water pouring down in my face. Welded water leaks in a power house with water dripping down my elbow. Welded boiler tubes sitting where everything was steel and there were at least a half dozen other welders within 10 feet of you doing the same thing. I have been in the welding profession all my life and have worked in boilers, tanks, distillation columns, tanker trucks and about everything you can imagine made of steel ,aluminum, stainless steel, copper , and titanium with hundreds of welders and I do not personally know of onw ever being electrocuted.

 

[showcrop]

I got a buzz on my finger once from the screw that hold the plastic handle to the rod holder.

 

[Mark Poss]

Standing, sitting, or kneeling is fine. I was an Ironworker for 35 years in Chicago and if we couldn't be on the building while we were welding Chicago would still be a prairie.

 

[Gary Mitchell]

The most painful thing that I have endured in my life is having my eyes burned from indirect light from a carbon arc torch. gm

 

[old]

BTDT too many times while working at a dock company. We had 2 or 3 guys side by side welding and the auto dark helmets would not go dark from the guy next to you so you got flashed and that in turn burned your eyes. Never have trusted the auto dark helmets since

 

[Bob]

A little information from the Lincoln Electric website:

Source: https://www.lincolnelectric.com/en-us/education-center/welding-safety/Pages/electric-shock-faqs.aspx

 

[Butch(OH)]

And another subject being blown into non factual bits of urban legend.
X2 to Mark Poss and welding man said.
Fact of the matter is lay on the darn thing and weld it. You are in less danger of dying from a shock than you are of getting hit by a meteorite while you are doing it, or an airplane falling out of the sky on you.
Do you weld without gloves?? If so expect a tingle when you put the rod in the holder. If its raining out you soon learn how to install new rods without screwing around,, if your smart, LOL.

 

[Butch(OH)]

No Loren your not a battery, urban legend only kills on internet forums, LOL

 

[Butch(OH)]

And if you open the link and read the
rest you see that they are talking about
the primary or infeed power not the
secondary or welding power, just saying

 

[Bob]

(quoted from post at 11:42:44 08/21/19) And if you open the link and read the
rest you see that they are talking about
the primary or infeed power not the
secondary or welding power, just saying

You might want to read the last sentence in my post again, it CLEARLY is talking about open-circuit voltages at the welding end of things.

If you conditions are right, and the welding current is flowing through you, and you can't get away or let go, it won't end well.

A "shock" is one thing, we've all had our share of those, but if the current persists for very long it won't be a good thing.

I have done more than my share of welding while sitting on steel farm equipment, and WORSE, inside combines and have had a couple of situations that have made me a bit more respectful of what could happen, and I like to have someone around, "just in case".

 

[ditchwitch]

And its dang painful. I was helping my boss back in the day pipeline work he was welding and a couple times i looked when i was turning a part. Man that night my eyes were dripping water it was so bad. Felt like someone poured sand in your eyes. It want take but once of that happening to you and you want do it again.

 

[NCWayne]

As others have basically said, nearly anything electrical can kill you. That said, standing, sitting, kneeling, etc on a piece of equipment that you're welding on isn't one of those electrical things that is apt to kill you. In the 30 plus years I've been welding, I've sat in buckets, laid under machines, laid on machines, hung on the side of a concrete silo, etc, etc, and had no problems. I don't know exact odds, but you're probably more prone to get shocked/electrocuted by a lightening strike than from welding.

When I worked in a fab shot we used to catch guys resting their hands on two different metal tables and zap them by touching the wire from the MIG gun on one table and hitting the trigger so the current flowed through them to the ground on the other table. Probably not the smartest thing to do, but it was funny as heck to watch them jump....It was even funny when it happened to you, after the initial 'shock' of what happened wore off.....LOL

Personally I've only been accidentally zapped a handful of times in nearly 30 years, and that always happened when water was involved and me, the metal, etc, were all wet.

 

[IowaJohn]

The only issues I've had getting a little shock is when I have to change rods standing on wet ground. I do avoid welding when standing in water feel like that's asking for trouble. As far as kneeling on the machine I'm welding I don't think twice just get it done.