grounding my engine driven welder

[Azphiks]

also posted in welding disc., hoping to get a variety of ideas: my welder is mounted on a slide out cargo bed and am lacking in confidence with ideas to ground my welder engine. would like to believe the unibody type frame of 08 350 truck would allow me to connect a ground wire from the welder engine battery to just about anywhere on truck body/frame. any professional advice would be very helpful and much appreciated

[metalmeltr]

All trucks are body over frame not unibody. You should be able to conect th ground wire any where on the chssie, engine block or flat bed you want, not sure what you are looking to achive please elaborate.

[metalmeltr]

Attach A Aligater Clip Toa Peice Of Heavy Wire Then When Ever You Are Redy To Use The Welder Attch It To The Frame

[Andy]

Actually Ford made some unibody trucks in the 60s. All the ones I've seen recently have been body-on-frame. You said "unibody type frame" which is a contradiction in terms. I'm assuming your truck is body-on-frame.

Are you trying to use the bed of the truck as a worktable and not use a ground clamp on your workpiece? I assume you don't have a factory bed. You'd probably burn holes in the thin metal. The bed of a truck is simply set on the frame. Many times there are rubber sheets laid between the bed and frame so the only electrical connection is via the bolts. If you connect your welder ground lead to the frame you may not get a good connection to the bed and your workpiece. You want the current running through your workpiece not the truck. I would connect the ground lead directly to the bed. It's better to have the ground connection as close to the work as possible, but if you have a steel plate for the bed you can probably connect anywhere on it and it'll work ok. You might as well connect directly beside/under your welder to keep the cable tidy and out of the way. I'd drill a hole through the plate. Sand off the paint around the hole. Weld a 1/2" or larger nut on the underside of the hole. Put a terminal lug on your welder ground lead and bolt it to the bed through this hole. You can probably repaint the area after you tighten down the bolt. You may have to remove the bolt and clean the rust every year or so. You can also make a ground lead with a ground clamp on one end and a terminal lug on the other. Connect this lead to the bed with the same bolt. Now you can lay small parts on the bed and just start welding. Or unwind the ground clamp for larger pieces.

If you're trying to do something else. Then I'm lost!!!

[Sberry]

The grounding you are concerned with is from the frame of the welder to the truck bed. If its bolted solid then you are good to go. Basically this is a scenario for a pinched wire from a cord and you want the chassis you are on and the machine at the same potential say you pinch a hot wire from a cord to the bed it needs fault protection back to the generating source. Say they were not bonded together, you have this fault that wont clear, 120v to the bed and you grabbed it and switched off or touch the welder, you could be the link. Bolt welder to bed or run a number 8 wire to it from machine frame.

[Andy]

I didn't even consider the generator output. I was thinking welding only

[usmcruz]

I found this thread very useful, as I was worried about putting my welder in the back of my Titan truck. Should I do anything different for a regular pickup truck like my Titan. I suck when it comes to wiring crap up, and usually shock the living bejessus out of myself everytime. I dont do electricity as you see, except for stringing the christmas lights on my roof which I fall off every year.