three phase stick welder, SCR controlled. Old, big, heavy, simple and
bulletproof.
I showed it to the buyer, we did some sample welds from my home three
phase, and asked how is he going to use it in his garage.
He said something strange: that he has a friend who is a Union
electrician and who said that he can modify it to run from single
phase. The buyer said that he is "not an electrician" but he said that
his friend sais something about adding a capacitor.
I can imagine, possibly, how he would use just one leg of the three
phase transformer, use rectified single phase, and then adding
capacitance would somewhat smooth the voltage. But would that not
somehow degrade the "constant current" feature of the welder? Maybe
producing giant sparks when starting an arc?
The manual of the welder, with schematic, is here:
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