What are the dangers here? What happens if that thin insulation between the copper bars breaks? Can the current jump to you if you use this bare handed?
A Battery Spot Welder Made from an Old Microwave and Excessive Mahogany [video]
11–20 of 49 posts
Re: A Battery Spot Welder Made from an Old Microwave and Excessive Mahogany [video]
#12Isn't it incredibly dangerous to disassemble microwaves?
The magnetron can have insulators made of a toxic substance that can be dangerous as a dust. This guy is just using the transformer for it's convenient laminates and primary winding - probably could have used a similar transformer with suitable current handling capacity but dead microwave ovens are fairly common. I have 3
Re: A Battery Spot Welder Made from an Old Microwave and Excessive Mahogany [video]
#13[deleted]
Re: A Battery Spot Welder Made from an Old Microwave and Excessive Mahogany [video]
#14I think I’d have just hit aliexpress and bought a battery welder for $30 shipped.
I ordered one of these and applied all of the recommended "fixes. The unit failed after two spot welds. I would not recommend and my experience seems to be mirrored across the internet.
The Malectrics kit is drasticly superior with reasonable price and resale value tends to be high if you're worried about limited use against cost to aquire.
Re: A Battery Spot Welder Made from an Old Microwave and Excessive Mahogany [video]
#15What are the dangers here? What happens if that thin insulation between the copper bars breaks? Can the current jump to you if you use this bare handed?
Well it's only 2 volts. So nothing will happen. Unless your hand is all sweaty maybe. Then maybe you'll feel it. I wouldn't worry.
Re: A Battery Spot Welder Made from an Old Microwave and Excessive Mahogany [video]
#16LTT has a video on a very simple battery powered battery spot welder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHNmVV7THBs
Timing is inconsistent and the contacts will stick and weld together after a bit of regular use.
Solid state is better if its designed well. Checkout the kWeld.
https://www.keenlab.de/index.php/product/kweld-complete-kit/
Re: A Battery Spot Welder Made from an Old Microwave and Excessive Mahogany [video]
#17I quite fancy getting a microwave oven transformer to make a pretty powerful electromagnet.
Another source for a big stepdown transformer : an old arc welder
Re: A Battery Spot Welder Made from an Old Microwave and Excessive Mahogany [video]
#18Fun fact: the cavity magnetron found in micraowaves was one of the most secret inventions of WW2, and guaranteed victory for the Allies.
It was invented to generate 10 cm waves in a compact package, which are ideal for radar. Although Germans and Japanese did early research on the magnetron, the Allies leap-frogged them.
The Americans had a university campus (around 4,000 staff) design production units for literally everything larger than a jeep that moved .
A Brit hand-delivered their prototype to the US, and the US solved some issues and productionized it.
Because the magnetron is made out of a block of metal, there was no way to destroy it after an airplane accident. But the Germans weren't able to adapt it, and admitted it was beyond their understanding at the time.
Ironically one of Germany's most advanced signals airplanes was captured just off a beach in England, but politicking between the navy and army meant it was left in seawater until it completely corroded. (You can identify these special signals planes by numerous antennae mounted on the nose.)
Re: A Battery Spot Welder Made from an Old Microwave and Excessive Mahogany [video]
#19What are the dangers here? What happens if that thin insulation between the copper bars breaks? Can the current jump to you if you use this bare handed?
If the the insulation breaks the tool short circuits and the welding tips don't work. Electricity follows the path of least resistance, so given how close the welding tips are together I doubt it would ever choose to go through you; especially any of the sensitive parts of you. You'd have to be bizarrely well grounded for it to discharge current through your body.
Re: A Battery Spot Welder Made from an Old Microwave and Excessive Mahogany [video]
#20These MOT based spot welders transfer far more heat to cells than capacitive discharge welders. This can result in the damage to heat sensitive components inside the cells which is the same reason that soldering isn't recommended for lithium cells.
To get around those issues, I built a capacitive discharge spot welder for tabbing lithium ion cells a couple years ago: http://robruark.com/projects/welder/welder.html