Friday, October 22, 2010

PULSE ARC WELDER PCB BOARD
This is the prototype board, 4 X 4 inches, that will be driving the Argon and electrode solenoids of the pulse arc stylus.
The white block, printed on the board,  in the bottom left corner is the 24VDC power supply and the block at the top left corner is the PWM relay drivers. The area on the rights is the microprocessor circuit.
The microprocessor is going to do a lot of things. It will determine if the electrode is touching the work piece, activate the argon solenoid, calculate the time when to give a pulse to the PWM relay driver circuit to retract the electrode, produce a couple of bleeps and give a pulse to start a pulse arc weld.
This processor will also talk to the other processor in the capacitor discharge welder to make energy pulses possible and much much more.
The PWM relay driver will supply 24V to the relay/solenoid and 22Ms (adjustable) later will give a pulsed adjustable duty cycle. This will reduce the current, preventing the solenoids and electronic driving circuits from overheating.
I'm waiting for the components and boards at the moment and will start doing some test welds soon.