Resistance-No Resistance wire welder

[bapgood]

Yeah, really, no alcohol in Ireland?

Anyways, I found that any spark at all would cause a poor weld with any type of silver wire. Too soft. Not sure if you caught it, but Breaktru has a short video where he welds together two wires with no spark, I believe at 27v or the like. Can't remember the size of the cap, but it was large. Even if you do get silver to stick, it is usually too soft to take a lot of twisting or pulling and will eventually separate from the res wire because it's just melted onto it, and not melded together.

Hopefully breaktru will comment....but I believe he is using a camera welder with 330uF or 340uF at around 75 volts and he rigged up his display so it wouldn't draw so much off the caps so the voltage reading is off....so 27 really equals 75 or there abouts if memory serves.

I could have missed something along the way though and be totally wrong

 

[gdeal]

Yeah, really, no alcohol in Ireland?

Anyways, I found that any spark at all would cause a poor weld with any type of silver wire. Too soft. Not sure if you caught it, but Breaktru has a short video where he welds together two wires with no spark, I believe at 27v or the like. Can't remember the size of the cap, but it was large. Even if you do get silver to stick, it is usually too soft to take a lot of twisting or pulling and will eventually separate from the res wire because it's just melted onto it, and not melded together.

I'm getting some that work and lot that look like this:

 

[TBinAZ]

I'm getting some that work and lot that look like this:

Yep, the silver melts at a lower temp than the res wire. I think Breaktru was using stacked smaller camera caps if I remember correctly, and that makes any difference. Doubt it though.

 

[bzmotoninja83]

im sure i should read all the other comments above my own but, wouldnt the circuitry from a disposable camera with a flash work? I took one apart when i was in school and charged the flash, touched the curcuit to a chair and, had a huge BAM sound and 2 scorch marks. did it on a key and also on a quarter. A friend of mine, might have fried his brains a little that mornung and decided to hit it on his palm too. Yep, scorch marks there too. Might be too intense of a spark for this application but still, might work.

Slam me with the banhammer for not reading 7+ pages of words....

 

[xMackx]

im sure i should read all the other comments above my own but, wouldnt the circuitry from a disposable camera with a flash work? I took one apart when i was in school and charged the flash, touched the curcuit to a chair and, had a huge BAM sound and 2 scorch marks. did it on a key and also on a quarter. A friend of mine, might have fried his brains a little that mornung and decided to hit it on his palm too. Yep, scorch marks there too. Might be too intense of a spark for this application but still, might work.

Slam me with the banhammer for not reading 7+ pages of words....

If you read the thread you'd see that most of us have built wire welders out of the flash circuit. lol

 

[breaktru]

Hopefully breaktru will comment....but I believe he is using a camera welder with 330uF or 340uF at around 75 volts and he rigged up his display so it wouldn't draw so much off the caps so the voltage reading is off....so 27 really equals 75 or there abouts if memory serves.

I could have missed something along the way though and be totally wrong

Yes bap is correct. I'm using a Spark-O-Matic (camera welder). And yes two caps totaling 340uF at 74v to 75v.

An update on what I did with the meter:
The on-box meter had very low input impedance of about 1 Meg so I series another 9 Meg for a total of 10 Meg of input impedance.
So now it's an even 10% difference. 75 actual volts now displays on the meter as 7.50v which makes it easy to work with.

@Dnerve , practice using only welding kanthal to kanthal or nichrome to nichrome. Once you get that down good and with the same voltage, switch to silver to kanthal or silver to nichrome. Adjust voltage down or up a volt at a time for the best weld. But..... Like @dsy5 said, use a strand of tin coated wire instead of the silver. Silver is too soft and breaks easily.

I've also found that less overlap of the two wires work better.

 

[dsy5]

im sure i should read all the other comments above my own but, wouldnt the circuitry from a disposable camera with a flash work? I took one apart when i was in school and charged the flash, touched the curcuit to a chair and, had a huge BAM sound and 2 scorch marks. did it on a key and also on a quarter. A friend of mine, might have fried his brains a little that mornung and decided to hit it on his palm too. Yep, scorch marks there too. Might be too intense of a spark for this application but still, might work.

Slam me with the banhammer for not reading 7+ pages of words....

The camera flash circuit will work fine. You just need to have a charge push button in it which you can limit the voltage to the cap to around 70V - 80V with the stock cap.

 

[bapgood]

I'm getting some that work and lot that look like this:

Dang gdeal your camera is way better than the one on my iPhone5 which for most stuff has really impressed me.

Anyway I just did a 32g kanthal to 32g nickel and thought I would report.
- LM welder
- 4700uF cap
- 27 volts
- Kanthal in negative clamp, nickel in positive clamp (not sure if it makes a difference)

I noticed that I need a small pop when welding the wires or the weld isn't good. I had a couple of times when the kanthal would heat up orange when touched but no pop and the wires pulled apart very easy.

The welds were strong enough to wrap a nice tight coil starting and ending the coil with a couple of wraps of the nickel NR wire.

 

[gdeal]

Dang gdeal your camera is way better than the one on my iPhone5 which for most stuff has really impressed me.

Anyway I just did a 32g kanthal to 32g nickel and thought I would report.
- LM welder
- 4700uF cap
- 27 volts
- Kanthal in negative clamp, nickel in positive clamp (not sure if it makes a difference)

I noticed that I need a small pop when welding the wires or the weld isn't good. I had a couple of times when the kanthal would heat up orange when touched but no pop and the wires pulled apart very easy.

The welds were strong enough to wrap a nice tight coil starting and ending the coil with a couple of wraps of the nickel NR wire.

Seems like you are generating more energy than the 'gsa welder" that I have. From your specs, I calculate output of 1.7 joules. From gsa's spec the device is putting out just under .7 joules.

I think the melt point issue (~960 C for silver and ~1500 C for Kanthal) is a key factor here. Since Nickel and and Kanthal have similar melt points, you are more likely to get both metals to melt and meld if they are of a similar mass melt point.

I need to go back and look at my energy calc spreadsheet to see if your output level would vaporize the silver. I may just need to go buy some nickel wire....

You know I just had a thought here to solve for better silver to kanthal welds. Perhaps if I double the mass of the silver at the weld point (I was using 30g silver and 32g kanthal), it would effectively bring up the energy require for melting silver to a similar level required for melting kanthal? (Now I know what I am doing later this afternoon...lol)

BTW, my camera is a three year old HTC Incredible cell phone. To get macro pictures on any cell phone, just take a lens from one of the disposable cameras and tape it on.

Here is a version of an upscale hack for your fancy iphone 5 .... iPhone Macro Lens

 

[bapgood]

Seems like you are generating more energy than the 'gsa welder" that I have. From your specs, I calculate output of 1.7 joules. From gsa's spec the device is putting out just under .7 joules.

I have been kinda lazy about trying different capacitance and volts. I haven't actually tried the 1000uF 35v combination, with my setup it is easy enough to change things around so I should try it.

The little testing I have done it seems like the 32g nickel works fine as long as its only bent one direction once. This morning I made a quick coil and wasn't super gentile while wrapping and was pleasantly surprised at the strength. Them I attempted to carefully unwrap the coil and both welds broke leaving the welded portion of nickel on the kanthal. Leaving me thinking that some 28g or 30g nickel might be needed for a less fragile assembly.

I'm going to look through some of my other wire and see if I can find some 28g or 30g of the tinned wire that breaktru and others are using.

BTW, my camera is a three year old HTC Incredible cell phone. To get macro pictures on any cell phone, just take a lens from one of the disposable cameras and tape it on.

Here is a version of an upscale hack for your fancy iphone 5 .... iPhone Macro Lens

Nice thanks!!! Wish I hadn't thrown away the 40 disposable camera cases I had....back to wallgreens I guess

This is my first iPhone and the main reason I got it was for the camera. But I think I just found my first project for my employers 3D printer....if it ever shows up....but tape will work for now.

Edit...Someone has already done it and the housing can be purchased from shapeways for $10.47

 

[bapgood]

Last night I tried 35v 1000uF and 30-35v 2000uF, both worked just as well as the 4700uF. (32 nickel - 32 kanthal)

Found a lens....here are a couple pics of different welds....Now I just need that type of zoom for my eyes and more steady hands.

 

[breaktru]

Last night I tried 35v 1000uF and 30-35v 2000uF, both worked just as well as the 4700uF. (32 nickel - 32 kanthal)

Found a lens....here are a couple pics of different welds....Now I just need that type of zoom for my eyes and more steady hands.

Nice photos bap. Yeah if our eyes can zoom in like that. I've been using the Bausch & Lomb Magna Visor Headband-style Magnifier

 

[bapgood]

I was ordering some other things and couldn't resist

DC DC Step Up Voltage Boost Converter 10 32 Vin to 12 35 150 Watts New | eBay

 

[mre777]

I was ordering some other things and couldn't resist

DC DC Step Up Voltage Boost Converter 10 32 Vin to 12 35 150 Watts New | eBay

Nice but I wish they would make them with better pots. After the fiasco with trying to change out the LM2577 pot and frying tho board I'm hesitant on trying it again.

 

[thatick]

Can't find alcohol in Ireland? That just doesn't seem possible... Seriously, quite a few of us have had problems with silver. Have you tried lightly sanding it (or using a scotchbrite pad) to remove some of the tarnishing? Nickel seems to work best, but as breaktru and I can attest, regular (tinned) stranded wire seems to work very well.

what kind of wire are you using? link maybe please.

 

[thatick]

Nice but I wish they would make them with better pots. After the fiasco with trying to change out the LM2577 pot and frying tho board I'm hesitant on trying it again.

clicked on link and price is now 130.25 for that board talk about inflation LOL

 

[xMackx]

clicked on link and price is now 130.25 for that board talk about inflation LOL

Sellers do that when they run out of stock so noone buys it. I'm telling the truth if anyone thinks it's a joke lol.

 

[dsy5]

what kind of wire are you using? link maybe please.

No link; it is simply stranded wire of about 20 gage, insulated. I just strip the insulation and remove the strands. Try to find the tinned variety...

 

[thatick]

ok so just like electric wire from Lowes? sorry im electrically stupid LOL

No link; it is simply stranded wire of about 20 gage, insulated. I just strip the insulation and remove the strands. Try to find the tinned variety...

 

[breaktru]

ok so just like electric wire from Lowes? sorry im electrically stupid LOL

Stranded wire: