Spot welders are used in the fabrication of automobiles, PC cases, power supplies, microwave ovens, electrical junction boxes, Faraday cages, and various electronics. A spot welder is used because it produces a highly defined point of contact weld. The materials are welded without excessive heating, so working pieces are handled easily. The weld is also highly controlled and repeatable. In this how-to we cover the basics of a spot welder, and then show you how to build one from a microwave oven transformer.

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[Koil_1] knows he’s forgetful. In order to save himself from any undue harm, or possibly to keep from burning his house down, he felt he needed a timed power switch to run his soldering iron from. He realized he could harvest the relays and timer circuit from a microwave. This allows him to have presets for specific tasks. Considering the fact that you can get a used microwave for free or close to it most of the time, this was a great re use of something that might just go wasted otherwise. Great job [Koil_1].

Buzzsurf microwaved an RFID card so you don’t have to. Pointless, but real, unlike those piles of $20s.

[via Synaptic Seepage]

Today is the Fourth of July in the US, where we celebrate our freedom by blowing up a small portion of our country. Embedded above is [Jory] and [Jonathan] doing it wrong by microwaving their fireworks. We think a good formula for this year’s celebration is wireless fireworks control, gas powered blenders, and CHDK’s motion sensing to get the perfect firework photo… and if we get really bored we’ll probably shove some LEDs in a hotdog.

Every so often I learn a new microwave trick. [skuhl] sent in this …. myspace video. It appears that with a microwave, a jar and a candle to get things going, you can create you r very own plasma in a jar. You’ll probably kill your microwave doing this, but damn it looks cool.