Mini spot welder

RJH laid this down on his screen :

There are plenty of DIY designs on the internet, you just need a 12v car battery, a HD relay, a push button and cable.

We've just bought one of these a couple of weeks ago. Arrived in under a week too.

There's about 20 settings, not sure what they are all for but seems to be the time for a weld and 7 worked fine for what we did. It took quite a pull using pliers to seperate the welded tag from the battery and even then the weld wasn't the weak point. So not used it much to date but happy with it so far, only done 2 packs about 10 batteries welded.

We were a bit worried as it rattled when we unpacked it, when opening it up we found that one of the two PCB supports securing the LCD had become loose.

Guessing a car battery would work, but the advantage of having a small pocket size version, that can be charged via USB.

consider getting some Kapton tape too for insulation if needed.

----------------- We got it because the NAO & Pepper robot series battery packs have been discontinued world wide, we've managed to hack apart the battery back and replaced the existing cells with higher capacity 18650 versions so they last closer to 3 hours compared to the 2 hours. Many schools and unis have these robots and they aren't cheap to replace. so we are thinking of offering this as a non-profit service to local schools too.

There are now integrated units with their own LiPo (roughly like a car jumpstart pack), much neater than assembling your own and more portable/easy to store.

No experience, but this kind of design seems common:

Theo

I made my own using an AA battery for a one off job. I'll see if I can find the 'How to' if anyone is interested.

Thanks - that'd be good. And to everyone else. I'll have a go at making one.