Comments on: Capacitive discharge cutting

By: bakadrh

bakadrh — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 19:59:25 +0000

This is great! I want to suggest that a small amount of shielding done with an inert gas will increase the cleanliness and precision of the burn by displacing the oxygen available to oxidize the metal into a fume. Argon or nitrogen works but may not be available to the home DIYers. CO2 from dry ice might work, since the Carbon makes a good bond with the Oxygen. Regular compressed air could be an advantage since it’s about 79% nitrogen; however one would need to play with the volume and velocity to optimize the cut (I started playing with that using a pump up sprayer about 20 years ago but lost the priority). Just a word of caution, zinc metals are a bit toxic so exhausting the fume will help you enjoy the weekends more. ->take care, and thanks for sharing! –bakadrh

By: teck monkey

teck monkey — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 10:37:10 +0000

i want i want i want :))) and egotastical grow up as others have said maybe the guy is busy or not so inclined to share ether way who cares im going to be spending the next few hours researching this class of device for other ways of building… its a cool concept and just the kind of thing thats spurs me to look for more.

By: PodeCoet

PodeCoet — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 08:20:31 +0000

Hello again,

I’ve just finished a write-up for you guys due to a suprising number of emails. It’s not much so far (and I apologise as I’m out of time), but it should get you well on your way to making your own device: http://ultrakeet.com/index.php?id=article&name=cdWelder

Snippets of source as well as detailed pictures are there for now. Source, layouts and schematics will follow in a couple of weeks – I hope this clears up any misconceptions.

-PodeCoet

By: cbob

cbob — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 06:15:03 +0000

Having welded in another life, I can say that was cool & I want 1. However, get some cheap welding gloves. The 1st few times you pick tiny bits of metal out of your skin it’s kinda neat/weird. It gets old fast tho. Handheld EDM…See what I missed out on (sniff)

By: sven

sven — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 03:32:19 +0000

hope he was wearing UV goggles of some description.

By: theweirdness

theweirdness — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 03:21:25 +0000

bet you feel like an ass now egotastical?

By: PodeCoet

PodeCoet — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 00:33:49 +0000

Hey guys,

Gah, I was hoping to complete this first, but someone submitted it to hackaday before I got the chance.

In short, YES, I will be releasing the schematics, PCB layouts and Firmware to boot, as soon as I finish bugfixing the spot-welding portion. I’m a little busy with work for the moment, so it’s a couple of weeks yet.

There’s a little more info on my other website; ultrakeet.com – Once completed I will be posting the designs/layouts there for download. Thanks for your feedback!

By: em

em — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 00:18:38 +0000

Some more details would be nice but it is up to steve to release as much or little info as he likes.
Steve isn’t forcing anyone to look at his work.
I’m with smilr – egotastical is free to upstage Steve if he feels so inclined.

As someone who does put much of what I do online I know it take a lot of time andSteve may simply be too busy building to do much writing.
EM

By: thethirdmoose

thethirdmoose — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 23:48:40 +0000

I wonder if you could mill PCBs with this and CNC

By: andres

andres — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 22:41:37 +0000

wow, thats a very clean implementation. i could see that being very usefull for fabricating small parts. hope he puts out some more specs soon! very good job.

By: smilr

smilr — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 20:09:35 +0000

jeez – who pissed in your cereal this morning egotastical? I for one did not even know that this was a commonly used machining technique.

Whether he shares his implementation details or not – this guy deserves some accolades for building one of these himself. You claim an effective unit can be built without a microcontroller – so get out there and _DO_ it, rather than bitch about this persons work.

By: nimitzbrood

nimitzbrood — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 20:07:52 +0000

This is very similar to a process called Wire EDM:

http://www.edmmachining.com/wire_edm.htm

And yes it’s pretty cool. ^_^

By: egotastical

egotastical — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 19:52:03 +0000

Whatever.

This guy doesn’t share, period. He’s into glory, not the greater good. I wouldn’t waste time looking for schematics or code. What looks like a cool invention is just one man’s implementation of well-known prior art; maybe you could pay him for the details.

Or not.

Anyway, this is F’ing trivial to do, and all you have to do is google amateur EDM or capactive discharge machining. It’s basically the opposite of welding. You also don’t need a micro to do it, you can create PWM waveforms from trivial analog circuits and some gates.

Here’s a start, using a PIC programmed in BASIC. Mind you, these people are not exactly rocket scientists, but they don’t treat everything like a top secret VC wankfest, either.

http://bbs.homeshopmachinist.net/showthread.php?t=32118

By: cirictech

cirictech — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 18:22:33 +0000

SO I must have one of these, if only o cut small stuff it would be really cool.

By: Gilliam V.

Gilliam V. — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 18:11:36 +0000

He cut the circle, triangle, and square in the can. but wheres the “X”?