Portable Pto-Driven Welder

Portable Pto-Driven Welder POWER TAKE OFFS (PTO'S) Power Take Offs (PTO's) 18-1-8 "It makes a nice, cheap portable welder that I can take anywhere," says Jim Brown, Vassar, Mich., who bought a used 300 amp, 3-phase Lincoln DC welder and mounted a pto shaft on it so he can operate it with his tractor. Brown bought the electric motor-driven welder five years ago at an auction for $17. It was designed for industrial applications and weighed 1,200 lbs. Brown used steel tubing to build a 2-wheel trailer for the welder and mounted 15-in. car tires on it. He mounted an 18-in. dia. pulley on front of the trailer that drives a smaller 6-in. dia. pulley that drives the welder's main driveshaft. "I can use it for both big and small jobs because the rheostat control box has a switch for straight or reverse polarity and dials that allow me to control voltage and amperage. It's also easy to operate be-cause it's a DC welder. These industrial-type 3-phase welders go cheap at auctions and can be a great buy. Most fanners don't have 3-phase power so everyone at the auction thought I was buying it for the copper in it. "The welder is designed to operate at 1,800 rpm's. I was concerned that running the welder slower with the pto would heat it up so I called the company. They said that the only negative effect from running it at less than 1,800 rpm's would be that I couldn't run it at full capacity. I decided to use the pulleys and belts to increase the rpm's to 1,800, although I'll probably never need to use the welder at full capacity." Brown used a short steel shaft and a coupler to connect the welder's main shaft to the 6-in. drive pulley. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup,Jim Brown, 9344 W. Millington, Vassar, Mich. 48676 (ph 517 871-2710).

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