Grounding & hi frequency questions

[berol]

Is it a good idea to ground your welder to a grounding rod driven deep into the ground or connected to a copper water pipe. Also should ones steel welding table be grounded to the rod or water pipe. Then could your welding machine ground cable be connect to the same point on your table? Also I am woundering about transmission of high frequency through a building where there might be sensitive electronic equipment in use when one is TIG welding. What types of equipment might be effected and what could one do to minimize the effects or is there very little likelihood of a problem occuring. Thanks for your comments.

[Sberry]

Try it first and see what happens before speculating about every possible outcome. The welder chassis is (or sposed to be) grounded thru the electric system.

[weldbay]

That said if you do not want your radio or tv to go crazy use a ground rod

[cruizer]

Problem is that when using a ground rod, and not knowing were the rebar is or the soil conditions, its kinda point less. Even tying into the copper pipe and not knowing if its tied into rebar is kinda pointless. Cause rebar goes everywhere that there is concrete.


So either run an isolated ground from the machine back to the main breaker, Or tywrap your tig torch leads and work together for the first 2' after leaving the machine will minimize the intereferance.

[weldbay]

Ground rods are cheap, run the ground through the ext. wall and sink it outside the building. HF is a loose canon and always takes the path of least resistance. When you install a CNC Plasma cutting table, for example, I have sunk as many a 6 grounding rods to stop feed back.

[berol]

Problem is that when using a ground rod, and not knowing were the rebar is or the soil conditions, its kinda point less. Even tying into the copper pipe and not knowing if its tied into rebar is kinda pointless. Cause rebar goes everywhere that there is concrete.


So either run an isolated ground from the machine back to the main breaker, Or tywrap your tig torch leads and work together for the first 2' after leaving the machine will minimize the intereferance.

"Or tywrap your tig torch leads and work together for the first 2' after leaving the machine will minimize the intereferance." What you suggested here was not quite clear to me. Please elaborate, Thanks

[cruizer]

HF tends to go everywhere as it searches for the tig torch. Tywraping the leads together, acts like a focused transmission tower, and minimizes any HF leakage.

Very simple, and it works...