By Michael & George Marinis
Electric and electronic enthusiasts love having every single tool that can make their lives easier. Today, we will be presenting a tool that does just that, a spot welder.
What does a spot welder do?:
A spot welder – as its name implies – is a device that can weld two metals at a single spot. These two pieces of metal should be “clean”, meaning that there must be no paint or any other coating, so that the current can pass through them. The most important characteristic of a spot welder, is that it can transfer big amounts of power through a single spot at a relatively small time, usually milliseconds, thus preventing the rest of the metal to be excessively heated.
In order to transfer this energy, we must find or make two copper electrodes. In this case, we found two and brought them to a shape we can work with. Copper can only be used in this part because of its relatively low resistance letting current pass easier thus, not generating a lot of heat to our device and not having big power losses as well.
Image 1: Copper electrodes of a spot welder
So why do I need to have one?
Spot welders are commonly used in the automobile industry, with companies using them to weld together metal sheets to create cars. Other uses include battery manufacture and even ortho molar bands.
However, it is an essential tool for someone who wants to take his/her projects to the next level if there is a need of welding metals together to make a large scare project, without having to pay loads of money to someone else. All sizes of spot welders are easy to use and can make a spotless welding if the user can estimate how much time the welding must last. This can be figured out when taking into account the type of metal used, its thickness and the electrodes used. A small pulse can make a weak weld and damage the materials, while a wider one can eject the melted material, or even make a whole instead of a connection.
Currently, there is not a big range of commercially available spot welders that are capable of welding both thick metals and batteries. Most people use them to weld very thin metals to batteries. Our version is a unique one, combining both the traditional metal welding with a battery welding add-on, all controlled by an Arduino Nano.
Image 2: Our own spot welder
The process of making it was not a hard one. There are countless of tutorials on the web explaining how to connect the transformers together, how to guide the current from the city line to the electrodes and all this cool stuff. What is great about spot welders though, is their adjustability. So the only limitation here, is someone's imagination.=
Image 3: A battery welding add-on
In conclusion, almost anyone with a basic knowledge of electrics and electronics can make a spot welder, whether it is a simple one, or a complex one to fit their needs. It is an easily accessible tool for most people and it can prove worthy of having when building large-scale projects.
You can find our own spot welder here: Hackster.io Link
