spot welder - Hack a Day

Capacitive discharge spot welder update

posted Jul 5th 2009 4:45pm by Eliot
filed under: misc hacks, tool hacks

welder

It seems one of our commenters took great umbrage with [PodeCoet] not documenting his capacitive discharge cutting properly. [PodeCoet] had been waiting till he got the full spot welder working before publishing, but he’s expedited the work after all our whining. Check out his full writeup of the device in its current state. It uses a 1Farad audio cap for storage. A dsPIC monitors all of the voltage sources and regulates charging. A nice touch is the tactile switch on the electrode.

Comments [21]

How-to: Build your own spot welder

posted Jun 23rd 2009 8:30am by Steve Watkins
filed under: how-to, misc hacks, tool hacks

Welding stainless steel

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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