Build A Spot Welder At Home http://users.frii.com/katana/spotweld.

html
1 of 4 6/14/2005 5:22 PM
How to build a spot welder without burning your fingers off
Now With Pictures!
I wanted a spot welder. I nearly NEEDED one. While wandering around online I ran across the wholly
wonderful website of Kurt Bjorn who, besides making spot welders, also makes rotary aircraft engines and
miniature turbojet engines. (yow.) Anyway, he had a discussion of how HE made a spot welder. Go there,
read that first. Then read my version.
My needs were somewhat different than his so my construction follows a different path. I will try and explain
how I built what I built, while discussing what he did.
You need an energy source. Both Kurt and I supplied our own homebuilt energy sources. He used a
transformer with an external secondary winding, that he removed. I used the guts of an old arc welder
with a double bobbin winding so removing the secondary was easy. In both cases, this adds a lot of
time to the project (compared to the total time required) but it has some advantages. You can buy a
MIG welder and use it as the energy source, a much much faster way to get this done, and many MIG
welders advertise their suitability as spot welder energy sources. However, MIGs and the prior
incarnation of my arc welder run the secondary at about 25 volts. If we make the assumption that
they're pulling about 1800 watts at the plug, that means they will have about 70 amps at the electrodes.
Both Kurt and I wound to get 4V at the electrodes which means we'll have more like 450 amps.
(Making the probably invalid assumption that we're getting the same efficiency with so few windings.)
The voltage doesn't matter anywhere nearly as much as the amperage, hence my decision to go this
route. It was also not that difficult to get 4 or 5 loops of #2 stranded wire around the transformer core.
Getting the power source ready to run took maybe an hour, and over half that was the time it took to
unwind the old secondary because I wanted the old 6 ga copper wire as intact as possible for another
project. But like I said, that's a significant portion of the entire time it took to build the system.
One marked advantage that I have, starting with an old arc welder, is that it has a welding amperage
control on it. This is actually pretty nice, as I found when I tried welding a 26 ga type K thermocouple.
It welded but it also blew the end of the wire off, until I turned the amperage down. You can actually
have TOO MUCH AMPERAGE. Who'da thunk it?
The electronics is where Kurt and I differ the most. He has a beautiful design with a solid-state relay
and a one-shot for timing. I made an orc-electronics setup where I use a $4 mechanical relay from
jameco that'll switch 220v@30A with a five volt signal. I supply the signal with a 9v battery and a
pushbutton. Electronics total cost about $8. I also have the massive, massive advantage that this is
easily adaptable to computer control with an optoisolator and a FET. I like this because it means I can
write a little program where I enter the wire specifications and it'll look up the details of how I ran it
last time.
Build A Spot Welder At Home http://users.frii.com/katana/spotweld.html
2 of 4 6/14/2005 5:22 PM

Because consistent timing is critical for good welds, use of a one-shot or of computer control to
determine the power-on time, is fairly essential unless you're just playing around with it. While I like
experimenting with my pushbutton version, every weld is different, and many are lousy.
Mechanical construction. Kurt's design is absolutely gorgeous. Mine looks like me n my cousin Bubba
threw it together in the basement. Which is essentially true only no cousins involved. Anyway. His
uses a DeStaco cam clamp to put pressure on the jaws. Mine uses a hinged 2"x2" construction with a
handle that supplies pressure. The major functional difference is the application of pressure on the
workpiece. Kurt's is designed to weld thin sheetmetal. Mine can do that, but in addition the jaws can
move during the course of a weld, and when I'm lap-welding two pieces of 0.058" wire, they compress
to just over half their original thickness during the course of the weld, so being able to move the
weldhead during the weld is essential. I will be adding something to do profiled compression, either
with (initially) just weights or (eventually) a steppermotor and screw.
Now, the place where Kurt's design is completely, utterly better than mine is in the electrode holder
itself. He uses holes bored through the arms, with screws pinching the electrodes in place, with the
arms as the conduction paths. I have a pair of aluminum plates that clamp the electrodes, but the
current is supplied to the electrodes by soldered-in #2 wire. Replacement of his electrodes takes a few
seconds; replacement of mine takes half an hour. However, my design has, by virtue of the aluminum
plates bolted to the wooden frame, the advantage of fairly good electrode positioning flexibility. Of
course if I'd done a precise job of construction, the electrodes would meet without having to do a lot of
fussing about with adjustments.
Build A Spot Welder At Home http://users.frii.com/katana/spotweld.html
3 of 4 6/14/2005 5:22 PM
Note the button at the top, that activates the relay, and the 9v battery beside it. Note also the cheap
wood construction. The big silver thing to the right of the jaws is an aluminum weight on a threaded
rod, allowing me to change the jaw pressure.
And finally, the electrodes themselves. We both use round electrodes that taper to smaller diameter
faces. I use electrolytic copper (that I forged out of a solid bar) and he seems to use brass. In both
cases, we turned the electrodes on a lathe, with 45 degree angles down to small contact faces. Mine is
5/8" OD tapering to 3/8" face. Copper is too sticky to use for a production electrode -- it is not
mechanically strong enough to resist being blasted in use. Brass has higher resistance and lower
thermal conductivity and is prone to welding to the material being welded. The ideal material to use is
electrode alloy, which is copper with some hardening agents in it.
Between the jaws, there is a flat steel washer propping them in the open position. The lower electrode
has tape on it to prevent problems with power flowing from the top electrode to points other than the
bottom electrode.
I have had no problems welding mild and stainless steel, and welding aluminum to steel. I have not yet
managed to weld aluminum to itself, and can't weld silver at all. But steel to steel, I can weld all day long,
and get beautiful welds very nearly as strong as the wire I'm welding in.
I found something interesting: if you want to reface your electrodes nicely after the faces have gotten chewed
up from lots of welding, a really good way of doing it is to take a piece of 220 grit sandpaper and fold it so
that it has the sandy faces on the outside, put this between the electrodes, close them gently, and pull the
paper out. This has the nice advantage of keeping the electrode faces parallel to one another.
This page created 3/15/02, last modified 4/23/04
Build A Spot Welder At Home http://users.frii.com/katana/spotweld.html
4 of 4 6/14/2005 5:22 PM
comments, suggestions, questions, email me!
Back to the main page