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Good to see you participating. We will try to get Midnight to get it down pat. Hey Toker, can you at least weld Nichrome to Nichrome or Kanthal to Kanthal as a test?
What concert you going to MT? One Direction?
Haven't tried that.Gonna redo one of the test units to 340....wait...how the hell do you hit 340 with 80's and 120's? (at least I THINK they're alll 80s and 120s) 200, 240, 280, 320, 360.....Might have to wait until tomorrow unfortunately. One daughter is having a birthday sleepover and I am (thankfully) taking the other to a concert.
Got my setup and testing done on the proto layout, now time to shorten wires and stuff into a project box.I am getting great welds with awesome linear hold but once I start wrapping the wire around wick the torsion breaks the weld on one or both sides. any tips? maybe a touch to hot?
Have been running 320 or 360 on test units. Kanthal to kanthal holds decent. The silver to kanthal seems to weld fine, but just like Papa said, they welds just won't hold. I haven't even tried to wrap any coils because just the test pulls are weak enough that I know they will break as soon as I finish a coil :/Just ordered some nickel wire so will see if that does any better (so Urq can get off my ass LOL)
Hey man I hooked u up with a link for nickel wire! Hehe
Winding a coil and avoiding snapping of wires.
Are you wrapping that on mesh or just a tool you use to build the coil?
On Mesh. I didn't take the time to oxidize it. Just did it as a demo
VTTV w/ Gary Dibley. Gary makes a Spark-0-Matic
Thats pretty dang cool.....congrats to all the foundersBreaktru....I'm still very jealous of your perfect touch abaility....because for me its hit and miss On a side note....using my LM2577 unit with 2x4700uF caps and 24v-27v and using my solid base, clamped wires, wand technique I was finally able to get a robust weld of 32g nickel and 30g kanthal. Strong enough that I couldn't pull it apart and then I held the kanthal in some pliers about 1/4" or so from the weld and wrapped the NR around the needle nose pliers pulling pretty gd hard and the weld held........but when I unwrapped and tried again the nickel wire broke at the weld, the weld held but created a rigid bend point I don't have any silver to play with....But I'm thinking some 28g or 30g nickel would be pretty robust and may hold up better to handling.
I thought this was interesting and worth sharing...
Out of pure curiosity. Would it be possible to use Spark-O-Matic for welding lipo battery tabs or it just does not have enough 'kick' in it?
I don't know much about electronics and i am not aware of what that disposable camera pcb is capable of. So anything i am going to say is only an assumption.The pcb does have a trigger to release the flash. If it works as i think it does than it could be used as a trigger for welding.The question is, is it just a matter of bigger caps and voltage to weld anything thicker than kanthal and silver wire.And is the pcb capable of charging bigger caps?I have just seen a diy cap arc welder but the guy was using 2 x 1F caps and 15volts transformer to charge them.I am by no means desperate or in need to build such thing but i have to admit that having handy dandy lipo tab, coil welder wold be awesome .Cheers
I understand. I would also advise against soldering cells of any kind with one of those cheapo 30W soldering pencils. It' pretty critical to properly control temperature. In that case, a capacitive welder would be a better option if you don't have a good soldering station.If you can happen across one of those big capacitor arrays for car stereos, and you happen to have a car battery charger, you can make a battery tab welder damn near for free, at least a lot cheaper than a good soldering station.
Haven't checked in for a bit so thought I throw an update up.I took a break from this for a while and just got back to it. Was able to get "usable" welds with 30ga Kanthal and 32 ga nickel NR on a unit using 3 80uf and 1 120uf (360uf total) charged to just over 75 volts. I have a trickle drain (maybe volts/sec), most likely from the meter, so I've been trying to charge to around 77-78 to give me a few to line up the wires.I am still only getting a spot weld at the end of one wire or the other that does not really have much strength. Not nearly the strength that I am seeing in breaktru's videos. But this setup was able to get me up and running. I've been slacking and the coils on my all my RBAs were anywhere between 1 and 4 months old. I'd just dry burn every 2-3 days or so to keep them going fairly strong. The wicks were still getting just a wee bit skanky though. Good thing that I pretty much stick with tobacco based juice mixed with peach/cherry/pina colada sometimes.
Sounds like your welding results are getting better.I stopped using the silver. The welds were great but the silver is fine .999 which is extremely soft. It would occasional break before the weld and the weld would remain. I switched to copper strands pulled from heavier gauge wire. I used a micrometer to measure for 32ga to 30ga strands that weld pretty good to the 32ga Kanthal.In the beginning, I found that if the voltage was dropping when I weld, a failed weld would result. When the voltage was stable, a perfect weld was achieved.Maybe you can try to remove your meter when you hit your voltage mark.
I stopped using the silver. The welds were great but the silver is fine .999 which is extremely soft. It would occasional break before the weld and the weld would remain. I switched to copper strands pulled from heavier gauge wire.
Thank you very much for your great ideas!!!I only have one question where do you draw the power supply 75V?Is you have a laboratory power supply unit?I genuinely apologies for my terrible English
Aluminum solder paste and a 30w soldering iron might work for lipo tabs. The aluminum solder paste is a god send for some lipo cell tabs, some just seem more solderable than others regardless if pre tinned or not. I'm not sure if a 30w iron will be enough, but the aluminum solder paste drastically reduces then needed heat and time applied to solder lipo cell tabs.I have never seen lipo cell tabs welded like the cylindrical lithium cells. Only soldered and a very pita to work with grid crimp.
HUH?
The reply was in reference to some previous discussion about solder/welding lipo tabs
The tabs used on LiPos are typically nickel plated so they solder very nicely with electronics solder. They do require flux and some roughing up with an abrasive, but after that they solder easily.If you were to take a LiPo apart, you would find the positive tab is actually welded to the aluminum cathode lead using a spot weld similar to the way tabs are welded to round cells in laptop battery packs. There should be no reason you could not weld the tabs on a LiPo if required.
For those making a NR/R coil say for an Odysseus, is there no harm in juice contacting the copper? Thought I read a scare post one time about that.