New consulting relationship with GreenTecAuto begins
What actually goes wrong with the batteries????
A look at todays Hybrid and EV battery packs
Battery packs exposed
Keeping Warm In New England
Plugging into the SUN
Making a small solar concentrator
Building MIMA and the plug in adapters
Converting a telephone truck to electric
DIY dual pulse Capacitor Discharge Spotwelder
Cell Miller mounting the components
Welding beautifully
More snubbing
Beefing up the switching board
Rebuilding the welder
Need better welds
Welder first test
Making some cells for weld testing
More parts of the process
New weld head
Spotwelding fixture #1
More energy
First weld testing
Making a spot welder??
Chevy Bolt EV joins the family
Getting in shape while making electricity
Retirement
Replacing gasoline with solar electric lawn equipment
What is Genesis One?
How to stop the aging process DIY
MIMA Install Day 2005 a Big Success!
Building a hybrid car grid charger
Tapping into the Wind
Expanding MIMA with the Distribution board ( users projects )

Rebuilding the welder

Rebuilding the welder
welder

More internet searching turned up a guy that made his own dual pulse capacitor discharge welder. We passed a few e-mails back and forth, and I was able to buy one of his unpopulated Mosfet power switching PC boards for a reasonable price.

I ordered some components and built up the board. I was not able to find the power Mosfets that he used, so I got some that had even lower RDS on and higher current rating.
Before trying the board, I decided that It was time to do the capacitor bank over again, with a more compact form factor, and aluminum buss bars instead of copper, as I was concerned about passing the high current across a dissimilar metal junction.
I used 3/16 X 2.5" wide aluminum plate to make the buss bars, and tied them together with more 3/16 aluminum. To make the lowest resistance joints, I welded the joining buss bar to the main buss bars, around the periphery, and through 5 through holes on each bar. Should be ready to try it out in the next couple of days, as I have three MIMA systems to build first.