PCB's ARE AVAILABLE AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE

PCB's ARE SOLD OUT 02/05/2011

WELDING PROBES

                                    This is Shawn's welding probes that he made himself

PCB's

TOO MUCH TIME

MOSFET PCB FILES ARE AVAILABLE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE

This is a photo that shows the 0.007" stainless steel weld

The mosfet PCB has been strengthened and works really good. I just received 0.007 stainless steel  strips and welded it with just one weld to a crescent wrench with a voltage of 12V and a first pulse of 1.2Ms and a second pulse of 7.8 Ms. This weld is so strong that it is impossible to break with your bare hands.  I'm going to make the control PCB's available to the people that gave me donations for this project first as promised.

Found It

We can see how powerful this welder is, It burned the copper. When I designed the Mosfet board I did add via's to connect the top and bottom layers to increase the load this board can take. At the place where it burned, I actually designed it to be connected with 4 wires (shown by the blue lines). The copper burned because it was connected vertically and not horizontally. I will include this in the manual and try to strengthen the copper more.

Thank you guys for all the suggestions about the cause of the copper burning. Everyone thinks that he knows best about what happened. THE PROBLEM AND THE CAUSE WAS FOUND AND REPAIRED. This welder was designed to work with a 3 farad Capacitor and at the time, had capacitors connected in parallel totaling 4.5Farads. The circuit at the top has a gate circuit that divides the top layer in 3 areas that needed to be connected with wires. These areas were not connected and it caused a weak spot on the copper. I took photos and explained in the manual what to do, to make the copper withstand higher current.

How do they say it in the movies?....no components were harmed with this incident :))

Capacitor Size

As you guys know, I have someone building one of my welders at the moment. He (Shawn) measured the capacitance of his capacitor and came out way short (He is sending it back). Shawn connected 3 capacitors in parallel with a total of 4.5 Farads. He said that the welder worked really good until he cranked it up to 18V with a first pulse of 30Ms and a second of 35Ms when he heard a "pop", That was after about 18 welds. We are trying to find out what went wrong and are in a process of pinpointing the problem. The first pulse is basically just to burn away oil and dirt and the second pulse is the one that does the actual weld. 30Ms for a first pulse is way too high and It might have something to do with the popping sound. When we find the problem, I will redesign and make sure that this never happens again. Hang in there guys, I will keep you updated.

Welder Case

Shawn sent these photos to show how his welder is progressing. These photos also show the case that we might make available if you guys are interested. He still has to work out what it will cost to make one of these and we might ship them out in different stages of manufacture to make it less expensive, meaning  with or without paint, etc. He is hoping to get his welder up and running by next week. Thanks Shawn, it looks awesome!!

Happy new year everyone!!!!

Thanks for all the support, e-mails and comments Guys. I took some time off to spent with my family over the festival season and are back to finish this project. I have a guy with the name of Shawn building this welder at this moment and I'm using his feedback and questions to write a manual with trouble shooting tips to help with the construction of this circuit. I am busy with the last part of this welder, the Mosfet circuit, and are making it smaller and lining the mounting holes up so the controller board can be mounted on top of the Mosfet board.
For the people that donated, at the bottom of the page, you guys are first on my list! I will be using this money to buy more boards and processors and have it available. THANKS GUYS
I have a very small group of people that are part of this blog and will let you guys have the first choice too.

THANKS GUYS, AND A HAPPY 2010 TO YOU ALL!!!!