Electrical Question (for the home)

[jdubya]

I just purchased an electric inverter arc welder which can run off of 208V - 476?V. I would like to run it at 220 and use the connection at my clothes dryer 220V 30A. (According to the user manual at the Ampre output I plan on running the machine at, 30A supply should be fine.) That way when I want to use the machine, all I have to do is unplug the dryer and plug in my welding machine.

 

Problem is this, the receptical for my dryer is the new style 4 prong plug with Ground, Black, Red, and White wires. The welding machine also has Green, Black, Red and white but in the wiring diagram for a 1 - phase set up it says that only the Green (ground) and the black and white are used.

 

SOOO, I went to Lowes to try to figure this out and the gentleman there gave me the 4 prong plug which will fit into my dryer recepticle and told me to connect ground to the top pin (round) and the black and white to either pin on the left and right of the plug and do not connect anything to the bottom L - Shaped pin.

 

This sounds simple enough but I want to post the question to anyone with more experience at this than me (hopefully an electrician) to see if this is the correct and acceptable way to do this or if it is going to blow stuff up!

[05 Chevdmax]

Yes that will work but you can double check the voltage on your plug to see if the left and the right are the hot wires they will show 110 each.

[jdubya]

what happens if I just hook the red to the L shaped pin? I double checked the left and right pins and they both read 120V. The L shaped pin must be the neutral.