A PEEK AT ALL THE FILES INCLUDED TO BUILD THIS WELDER

THE DOCUMENT BELOW  SHOWS WHAT ARE  INCLUDED IN THE DOWNLOADABLE  PACKAGE.
UPDATE: THE MOSFET PCB OUTLINE FILE (.GKO)CAN NOW BE DOWNLOADED HERE.

ADJUSTING PULSE 1

Pulse 1 on this welder is to burn away oil and dirt and pulse two makes the actual weld. I have many guys telling me that they set pulse one much higher to get two welds in one. Unfortunately, that's not how it works. Pulse one will join the two metals lowering the resistance and the energy of pulse two will take the shortest path to the other electrode doing basically nothing. In other words, If a 3ms pulse is enough to adhere the metals being welded and you set pulse one to 3ms and pulse two to 12ms then you will get one weak weld formed by the 3ms pulse and not the 12ms pulse.

To make decent welds with a dual pulse welder you should turn pulse one off and find a voltage and pulse 2 setting that gives you  good solid welds. Leave the welder on the determined  voltage and set both pulse potentiometers to 0, adjust pulse one to a low setting and make a weld. Keep on adjusting pulse one higher until the metals starts to adhere, decrease pulse one potentiometer about 3%. Set pulse two to the determined setting above and you should get really good welds.

The size of your electrodes and cable to your electrodes makes a big difference. A 4 feet long #0 welding cable will give you twice the current than a 4 Feet #8 welding cable. Do not make your cables shorter than 4 feet though.

UPDATED FIRMWARE AND WELDER FILES AVAILABLE SOON

I've been working on a new version 2.5 firmware for the Capacitor Discharge Welder and also a package that will contain the newest firmware, gerber files, Bill of materials, manuals and an extra 6 pages to explain how the circuit works and trouble shooting procedures etc. I've included Version 2.1 and version 2.5 in case a bug shows up. Version 2.5 has a change to the charging system, taking the stress off mosfet Q4, slowing the charge intervals and two points on the control board can be jumped with a wire to change the maximum voltage of this welder from 20 to 23.2V. This will increase the energy of the welder from 600Ws to  807Ws. You will need 25V capacitors to use this feature and Diode D10 has to be changed. UPDATE: I'm busy doing some final tests on the firmware. I did not get a very big response about making everything available so I'm going to start by making the updated chips available

If you don't know how to program a processor, you can buy one of these programmers.

 This one is $34.95  : K8076 serial programmer   

 This one is $69.95 : Cana USB programmer

It is as easy as starting the software supplied with the programmer, plug your microprocessor into the programmer, connect the programmer to your computer, load the Hex file and click on "write". It will only take a couple of seconds.

NAVIGATION

HERE IS AN EASIER WAY TO NAVIGATE THIS BLOG, click on the links below and read the pages from the bottom, up:

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Pulse Arc Update

My function generator which came a long way with me went up in a plume of smoke. I had to replace it and bought a Rigol DG1022. It's a nice generator but pricey. I am going to use this generator to play with different waves to see if I can get the correct waveforms for the pulse arc welder. I am thinking of designing a new board from scratch, its already halfway drawn on a piece of paper :). The Budget is also a little low on funds and I will start to buy components as soon as possible. This welder will use much smaller and easy to get capacitors.
These things take time and lots of work so don't expect to see it before the end of this year.

ROGER CARR LET ME KNOW THAT FUTURE ELECTRONICS SELLS THE IRFP2907PBF MOSFETS FOR $3.60, THANKS ROGER.UPDATE: FUTURE ELECTRONICS CHANGED THEIR PRICE TO $6.00.....DO NOT BUY FROM THEM!!!!

HAPPY NEW 2011 EVERYONE