Wire welder tip

[cobalt327]

Greetings to all the wire welders out there!

I came up w/a simple way of holding the wires to be joined, even simpler than using a spring. Don't know if this has been covered elsewhere, but this works too good not to pass it along! (I would have added it to an existing thread but it seems the welder building threads are locked.) Sooo anyway, the arrows in the photo below are pointing to neodymium magnets holding Kanthal and nickel wire (not gonna work for silver, obviously). The magnets were simply placed on the alligator clips that I had been using to hold the wires. Gator clips can be made to work, but as-is they are almost useless. BTW, the voltage didn’t need to be changed with my box, but YMMV.

 

[Das Auto]

In what application would this be necessary in vaping and/or coil building?

 

[cobalt327]

Some atomizers are configured in such a way that the leads coming off the coils are so long that they add too much resistance to the coil as a whole. So to counter the excess resistance that would result if all resistance wire were used, non resistance wire is welded to the resistance wire and is used for the tails off the coil. Other attys have heads that use rubber insulators that can char if the coil legs are too hot. Kanger bottom coil heads are like that. And when building coils from ribbon Kanthal, having round wire tails are sometimes easier to attach to the atty build deck posts.

 

[twgbonehead]

Cobalt,

Nice idea! I use some flat-tipped copper alligator clips (for which this wouldn't work, unfortunately) but I can't for the life of me figure out where they came from - I was sure it was either FT or Harbor Freight, but neither of them seem to have them. But, for the standard steel serrated types, this looks ideal! (And I guess technically the flat-tipped ones shouldn't be called "alligator" clips - I sometimes refer to them as "Duck Bill" clips). Now I gotta figure out where the heck I got them from!

Although I don't use NR-R-NR wire much these days (different heads now) I have been interested in trying to make a thermocouple by welding a piece of nickel wire to the center of a nichrome coil, which should give a sensitivity of about 35 uV/*C for use as a somewhat more accurate temperature control on a coil (and I believe a CD welder ought to be ideal for making a thermocouple!)

 

[cobalt327]

Sounds like an interesting project! Keep us posted if it comes to fruition.

ETA I googled "flat jaw alligator clip" and saw this. There are other types and suppliers: