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Thread: Welding machine from wiper motor - video

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    Jon
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    Welding machine from wiper motor - video


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    baja (Oct 12, 2023), Dollar Bill (Oct 13, 2023), fmerenda (Oct 12, 2023), jrouche (Oct 13, 2023), kboy0076 (Oct 14, 2023), mr mikey (Oct 13, 2023), nova_robotics (Oct 11, 2023), piper184 (Oct 12, 2023), rlm98253 (Oct 11, 2023)

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    nova_robotics's Tools
    Very creative. Producing CO2 with baking soda and vinegar is pretty neat. I've thought many times about using car exhaust a gas shield. The wire speed control kinda sucks. But I have to ask WTF is with the saw blade?

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    Quote Originally Posted by nova_robotics View Post
    Very creative. Producing CO2 with baking soda and vinegar is pretty neat. I've thought many times about using car exhaust a gas shield. The wire speed control kinda sucks. But I have to ask WTF is with the saw blade?
    Wire speed is way too fast, you can see it in the welds, way, way too much wire in the weld.

    As for the saw blade, this is the same person who made a larger flat washer by taking the bearing seals off, sprinkling in metal shavings and adding super glue. It looks like this guy is one of those people that finds whatever to use in the build.

    As for the CO2 generator, a simple calculation shows it to be way more expensive to produce that way. And - the pressure regulation is an innertube. A more constant delivery would be needed for welding. As the inner tube deflates, the pressure goes down. At the beginning, the pressure might be too high and then it is too low - bad for welding.

    Now as for your car exhaust idea - that would be a problem. While there is a volume of CO2, your problem would be the H2O in the exhaust. Here is a good discussion of the chemistry of engine combustion:

    https://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=104735

    In the exhaust, you also have lots of N2 flowing, since it is a major component of air. There is a school of thought that Nitrogen, being inert, could replace Argon in the shielding gas, so that part is useful, but your problem is going to be the water. Water in simple MIG welding is a source of Oxygen and Hydrogen (it is easy to convert water to H2 and O with the plasma arc) and both O2 and H2 are bad for weldments. Hydrogen causes delayed cracking also known as cold cracking and when embedded, it causes Hydrogen to be deep in the weld. As for the Oxygen in the shielding gas, while it can have a beneficial effect in small amounts, the combustion equation looks like the water in the output is a fairly high concentration and the various sites say in higher concentrations, O2 promotes combustion and uncontrolled oxidation.

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    That's a good point about the water vapour in exhaust. I was mainly considering it for dirty get-back-moving welding when you're in the middle of the woods using the vehicle alternator/battery as a welder. It doesn't make any sense to have a spool gun with you in the woods if you're going to try that anyway. Just bring rods and arc weld.

    I saw some guys who had made bumpers for their Jeeps out of capped pipe, then put fittings on it and filled it with compressed air. So their bumpers did double duty as a compressed air tank. I thought that plus an alternator welder would be a great in the middle of nowhere fix anything solution.

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    Quote Originally Posted by nova_robotics View Post
    That's a good point about the water vapour in exhaust. I was mainly considering it for dirty get-back-moving welding when you're in the middle of the woods using the vehicle alternator/battery as a welder. It doesn't make any sense to have a spool gun with you in the woods if you're going to try that anyway. Just bring rods and arc weld.

    I saw some guys who had made bumpers for their Jeeps out of capped pipe, then put fittings on it and filled it with compressed air. So their bumpers did double duty as a compressed air tank. I thought that plus an alternator welder would be a great in the middle of nowhere fix anything solution.
    Stick welding is much better as you have the shielding gas from the flux on the rod. Simple, fewer moving parts, just keep the rods dry. You can use you jumper cables to carry the juice and the amount of extra stuff you need is minimal (you don't need to chip or brush the flux since you are trying to get out of a breakdown).

    I've seen the compressed air bumpers before. Often you have to air down to rock crawl, and re-inflation is nice with the air tanks.

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    That's some strait-up MacGyvering!!! I'm not a welder but considering every part of his welder was made from leftover parts they looked pretty danged good to me. It aint a Miller ShopMaster but he's way South of the 4 grand it would cost to own one.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Dollar Bill View Post
    That's some strait-up MacGyvering!!! I'm not a welder but considering every part of his welder was made from leftover parts they looked pretty danged good to me. It aint a Miller ShopMaster but he's way South of the 4 grand it would cost to own one.
    Just because he made something from scrap does not make it useful. This implementation is pretty awful and the quality of the welds is very poor.

    As far as the $4k price, that is way off. Just a welder, mig/tig gas and gasless (flux mig or stick) runs on amazon in the $200 to $300 with some lighter capacity (more than this battery welder in the post) can be had at the $100 range - so it is not $4k.

    Is a spool gun needed? Not for steel. Aluminum? It's easier than spooling from the machine, but it can be done without a spool gun. But this post can't do aluminum - not with an innertube of CO2, you need Argon. Magically, an innertube of Argon shows up at 16:15 and he welds aluminum. Oh, please!!!!!!! Where did he get the argon? Not like he got the CO2 - you need to compress air and get it from there. Air is 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 1% argon, 0.04% CO2, 0.002% neon and everything else is much much less. So - he filled an innertube with argon and wrote on tape to say it was argon.

    You can get a spool gun for $50-$200.

    Bad welds can be dangerous and even fatal. This spool gun makes bad welds.

    If you want to do inexpensive welding, stick can get you reasonable welding in the range of $60 to $150 - OH, he used a stick to put the spool gun together...

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    Who died and left you in charge of welding?

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    Quote Originally Posted by nova_robotics View Post
    Very creative. Producing CO2 with baking soda and vinegar is pretty neat. I've thought many times about using car exhaust a gas shield. The wire speed control kinda sucks. But I have to ask WTF is with the saw blade?
    Holds the wire spool.

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