Jon Anderson writes:


He had no answer on the electrical question though. I'd asked someone,
somewhere, about just using one leg of the 220 for 110, like we do here,
to run tools with brush motors. He informed me that their 220 IS 220,
each leg, where ours is combined from two legs of 110. A step down
transformer will take care of that issue, I've already left a decent
sized one with my wife. But for the welder...

So dumb question for the electron challenged, can I just hook
this up to their 220 and run it, or will that smoke it? If the
latter, what are my options?


So you have two problems: frequency and voltage.

A) A transformer, including those with one winding that is
fixed & one that moves [aka "motor"] has iron as part of its
design. The iron is part of the inductive reactance that limits
the flow of current.

Too little XsubL = too much current == smoke.

The iron required is inversely proprtional to frequency. The
lower the line freq, the more iron needed. Aircraft use 400 Hz.
to save weight.

So running 60Hz anything [transformer-based] on 50 is iffy at best.
Maybe you can limit the current, maybe the duty cycle is low enough
that you can get away with it.

B) Voltage: The US and other countries use 220~240 volts, the
exact value is of little concern. What *IS* important is that
in the US, the center-tap is grounded at the main breaker and
is called "neutral." (This is called "split-phase" but NOT
two-phase, please.) In other places, one end of the 240 is
grounded.

So in the US, no part is more than 120V above ground; in other
places, 240v. Further, most of the control circuits run on 120.

Now, if your gadget is really 240v, not 120-0-120, and things
are up to the 240; then it should work. A water heater is one I
might bet on. Others, YMMV.



There is one idea I have. Can you get a 120-0-120 generator, and
size the pulley ratio to spin it at whatever rpm [likely 1800
or 3600] to get 60 Hz out?




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