Arduino Based Spot Welders

[Rabid Badger]

Leads are finished. The battery is on hold until next payday.

 

[Rabid Badger]

It works!

When I first powered it up I was goofing around with some aluminum foil and it didn't seem like it was doing much so for my first weld on a battery I had it set at 70ms and blew a hole right through the top; fortunately I was testing on a dead cell.

Scared the **** out of the wife, though.

With 0.15mm tabs 10ms is just about perfect. The welds will not come loose; if you try to pull off the tab it just tears around them.

I've attached pictures of the results of both the 70ms and 10ms welds.

 

[pcmeiners]

Cool.....so when do you start the Hadron Collider battery pack?

Aluminum has low resistance and conduct heat well, and produces a non conductive oxide when heated to weld temperature.. aluminum is out.

Aside from Nickel strips, I was reading on one of the forums there is a Copper/Nickel alloy strip which has better than Nickel conductivity but looks promising to use instead of pure Nickel or copper strips. Other have tried pure copper but it has little resistance (welder need resistance to produce heat) and conducts heat away from the weld area to fast.

 

[theoldwizard1]

So I bought this battery spot welder from Banggood. About $60 with shipping.



Not shown is a USB-A to USB-C charging cord and some 0.1mm x 7mm nickel strip. (I would recommend 0.15 or 0.20mm x 10mm or 15mm. I did my testing with 0.15mm.)

I have only done a couple of batteries, but it works as described. (Those nice looking gold connectors are called XT150 - latest high current from the RC world.)

The good

• Portable
• Includes internal batteries
• Reasonably price

The bad

• Instruction manual in Chinese (simplified version in English on the back of the unit)
• Very short wire (the copper "barrels" are actually encased in clear shrink tubing)

Battery welder in action (not me).

 

[Rabid Badger]

Cool.....so when do you start the Hadron Collider battery pack?

Aluminum has low resistance and conduct heat well, and produces a non conductive oxide when heated to weld temperature.. aluminum is out.

Aside from Nickel strips, I was reading on one of the forums there is a Copper/Nickel alloy strip which has better than Nickel conductivity but looks promising to use instead of pure Nickel or copper strips. Other have tried pure copper but it has little resistance (welder need resistance to produce heat) and conducts heat away from the weld area to fast.

I'm going to start with a portable 5/9/12v power supply based on a cheap boost converter.

The scrap strips I tested with turned out to be nickel plated steel so they were very easy to weld. When the pure nickel strips showed up yesterday I had to kick the weld time up to 20ms before the welds were impossible to pull off. I honestly don't anticipate any of my projects exceeding the capacity of the nickel strips.

 

[pcmeiners]

We will be fine with pure Nickel. Some of the battery builder creating mega batteries want to weld copper strips so they have minimal power loss due to the Nickel resistance... We are in not in their league, they build electric bikes that do the quarter mile, and 0-60 timed runs.

Have to dig my Nickel strip out. About 5 years ago I purchase a few large rolls of Nickel really cheap but everything is packed for my home move.

 

[tlmartin84]

So I bought this battery spot welder from Banggood. About $60 with shipping.



Not shown is a USB-A to USB-C charging cord and some 0.1mm x 7mm nickel strip. (I would recommend 0.15 or 0.20mm x 10mm or 15mm. I did my testing with 0.15mm.)

I have only done a couple of batteries, but it works as described. (Those nice looking gold connectors are called XT150 - latest high current from the RC world.)

The good

• Portable
• Includes internal batteries
• Reasonably price

The bad

• Instruction manual in Chinese (simplified version in English on the back of the unit)
• Very short wire (the copper "barrels" are actually encased in clear shrink tubing)

Battery welder in action (not me).

Have you used it much since?

I bought a similar one and it worked well for a few welds, and is now useless.


I want something decent to repair the occasional dead cell in tools. But I don't want another project. A day kit would be okay but I don't want to have to randomly put parts together.

 

[theoldwizard1]

Have you used it much since?

I bought a similar one and it worked well for a few welds, and is now useless.


I want something decent to repair the occasional dead cell in tools. But I don't want another project. A day kit would be okay but I don't want to have to randomly put parts together.

Only used it a couple of times. Been sitting for months.

 

[GeoBruin]

I'm in the market for a spot welder but it would admittedly be a very occasionally used tool. I also don't have much space left so this is, intriguing if it can make even a few welds a year.