Made a jig out of two parallel pieces of 2mm quartz sliding the wires between them, now at least I hit them together most of time.
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Hey me too
dsy5 will probably comment as he will likely try it before me....He had the thought to try using a good old knife switch to release the capacitor charge. This way the wires can be positioned touching and then quickly throw the knife switch to make the weld. dsy5 was able to achieve a similar result using a banana connector.
Does "knife switch" instantly bring images of Frankenstein to anybody else
What would prevent the ark from being on the knife switch?
I thought the same thing, but that is when he said it worked with the banana plug. I'm guessing it has to do with the resistance of the switch compared to the wires being welded.
Thanks guys. I will omit the resistor and move the switch. I also plan on adding another 1000 cap. will post results if any are interested. BTW where is the micro farad symbol on the keyboard?
I've been asked several times, how do you light an LED with a single AA battery in the Spark-O-Matic. The answer is: "A Joule Thief". A White or Blue LED requires a forward voltage of approximately 3.3v yet you can power it with a single AA battery with 0.3v to 1.6v.
The LED is SUPER bright and will light even when the battery is considered "DEAD".
It's a very simple circuit and the parts I had on hand.
A Blue or White LED
2N3904 Transistor or equivalent
1k Resistor (Brown-Black-Red)
Ferrite Toroid core, taken from an old PC power supply.
Thin wire, two colors
Photos on Spark-O-Matic web page.
The LED is SUPER bright and will light even when the battery is considered "DEAD".
It's a very simple circuit and the parts I had on hand.
A Blue or White LED
2N3904 Transistor or equivalent
1k Resistor (Brown-Black-Red)
Ferrite Toroid core, taken from an old PC power supply.
Thin wire, two colors
Photos on Spark-O-Matic web page.
Ummm....maybe more......I think you have figured me out
Actually for a different project
It's not as pretty as some of you guys are making but it works great.
so is your battery on the outside because you are using it to turn off the board? Looks good man just don't go reaching in there for a sandwich.
I put the battery outside so I didn't have to bend wires every time I take the battery in and out, and yes when not using it I take the battery out just as a precaution. Mmmm electric sandwhich
My first 10 I had probably 50% break. My second 10 I was up to about 90% success. Last few I have done, none have broken. Nothing changed on my welder so I guess it was just practice. Since my coils are wrapped pretty tight around a pin and then I wrap the legs for a dual coil and jam it in an atty, I would say I am less than gentile on them.
One thing I have been doing is holding the momentary button with my finger while I weld, I don't let go until after the wires are bonded. This for some reason helps and also gives me a steady place to put my hand.
So.. I just want to give a shout-out and thanks to GSA. He sent me the welder that he put together for the tutorial which he posted earlier. I received it today and so far I have had an 80% success rate with 30g .999 silver and 32g kanthal on the first try for 10 welds. It definitely needs a steady hand and good alignment, but the sloppy welds I have made so far are holding up to a significant amount of pull tension.
I envy you guys who have the mad electrical skills to pull this together. This has been one of the most informative threads on ECF. Thanks again to GSA that I will never have to twist NR to R wires ever again.
I envy you guys who have the mad electrical skills to pull this together. This has been one of the most informative threads on ECF. Thanks again to GSA that I will never have to twist NR to R wires ever again.
I would like to thank the Greek fella for being the first to invent one of these welders. I would also like to thank mre777 for suggesting the flash circuit on a camera and everyone else who has helped our gain for knowledge. The fact that I built a nice rw nr welder for 3 dollars that works so well tickles me.
Finally got my LM welder all buttoned up. Made several strong welds 30g kanthal to 32g nickel with 4700uF @ 24v using the touch method. Still a little hit and miss for me, but practice makes perfect I guess
My first attempt at building such a device was back in November but I was way, way off with the design and just melted my wires. I shelved the project as I had too many other things going. Then a friend sent me the video of the Greek setup and I got my interest back up. I then watched the threads and all the experiments and unfortunately I still couldn't participate due to life getting in the way.
So last week or so I saw that GSA had done a bill of materials and even a nice write up on instructables.
I ordered the stuff and assembled and built my first NR-R-NR wire coil in 5 minutes. WOW! This is one of my long time pain points for rebuilding and other experiments. I just finished this and tested one NR-R-NR wire and I have to head to bed.
My wires aren't very long but as much grip with my fingers as I could get and as hard as I could pull the thing just laughed at me.
I found that GSAs build takes about 30-35 seconds to charge for me and "POP" stuck like a champ. The first test was NiC80 with pure nickel but I have lots of other combinations to try.
Thanks to all the makers of the world. Thank you especially GSA that got me up and running. I'm sure I'll be doing my own fine tuning if/when I have time. This will certainly make my vape life/hobby a more pleasant thing.
So last week or so I saw that GSA had done a bill of materials and even a nice write up on instructables.
I ordered the stuff and assembled and built my first NR-R-NR wire coil in 5 minutes. WOW! This is one of my long time pain points for rebuilding and other experiments. I just finished this and tested one NR-R-NR wire and I have to head to bed.
My wires aren't very long but as much grip with my fingers as I could get and as hard as I could pull the thing just laughed at me.
I found that GSAs build takes about 30-35 seconds to charge for me and "POP" stuck like a champ. The first test was NiC80 with pure nickel but I have lots of other combinations to try.
Thanks to all the makers of the world. Thank you especially GSA that got me up and running. I'm sure I'll be doing my own fine tuning if/when I have time. This will certainly make my vape life/hobby a more pleasant thing.
bapgood, That looks awesome! I'll have to read more of the thread and followup on what thoughts you've used on your build.
I love the plug for the cap.
I love the plug for the cap.
Finally got my LM welder all buttoned up. Made several strong welds 30g kanthal to 32g nickel with 4700uF @ 24v using the touch method. Still a little hit and miss for me, but practice makes perfect I guess
Finally got my LM welder all buttoned up. Made several strong welds 30g kanthal to 32g nickel with 4700uF @ 24v using the touch method. Still a little hit and miss for me, but practice makes perfect I guess
That looks beautiful, well put together. Touch method?
Thanks!
Touch method - Is what most people are using (clamping a wire in each clamp and then touching the wires together)
I have played around with a bonk method (pics below), where the wires are held together and setting on a fixed post and then I bonk them with a lead I hold in my hand. I even made a wand, but I don't think this method works as good as the original touch method.
I tried another method this morning. I put the wires in the clamps and used a helping hand to hold the free lead (unplugged) so that the wires were touching, charged the cap, and then plugged in the free lead. It worked the first couple of times but didn't weld, it acted like it need more juice. Then the next couple of times it arced at the plug so I gave up.
Thanks!
My thoughts were to have a decent amount of easy adjustment and some bling via the display.
- I used Dean rc battery connectors for the cap ports. I have 480, 1000, 2200, and two 4700 caps that I can easily swap in different combinations.
- The brass tube sticking up is soldered to the voltage adjustment pot screw on the LM2577.
- Momentary button for charging the cap bank, I added a 470 ohm resistor going to the cap bank to limit the current draw.
- The fixed clamp is hard wired to the cap bank negative.
- I used two gold plated rc bullet connects for cap positive and negative out.
- Another Dean connector for input power. I'm using a 12v power supply, but I'm going to make a 9v battery tab with plug so I don't have to rely on a power supply.
- I used a DPDT rocker switch to supply power when turned on and used a 1K resistor to drain the cap bank when switched off.
- dsy5 helped me with an op-amp circuit to turn on the led when the cap bank is charged. I don't have it hooked up right now as I'm fine tuning when it turns on. I still find myself wanting to know the voltage of the cap bank. So I might remove the led and momentary charge switch and replace them with a DPDT momentary switch so that when its pressed the display shows the charge voltage and then switches back to the LM output voltage when released.
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