[floyd]

Soldering involves sanding, alcohol cleaning, flux, drop of solder then soldering the tab. So the spot welder will get rid of four of the five soldering steps.

I bought two mini spot welders to see if they work better than soldering battery packs together. The first one I got was the red one. And yes Michael it has all the customer complaints fixed in the newest version, as per the note in the box. I used a 12 volt car battery I had that was fully charged and did nice welds at 60% power. It seemed like more power than other people on YouTube needed so I hooked up my booster pack to the battery and dropped the power setting to 35% and had nice welds. So my car battery is weak.

The black welder has a lion battery built in the unit that is a 5.0 volt 5300mah pack or single cell. The unit doesn't need as much power as the red one to operate properly. With a .010 strip I can do nice welds at power level 4 of 6. Thicker .015 strips need more power on either welder. I prefer the .010 strips on both, the welds are nicer.

The red one was $26.00 CAD with shipping included and seems to be power hungry. The black one with the built in battery was $41.00 CAD shipped and is the one I prefer. Both were bought from Banggood during a flash sale..

I also bought some NIMH batteries from IKEA. They sell a pack of 4 1900mah AA NIMH batteries for $4.99. I ordered ten packs and was surprised to see they are made in Japan. A Google search compares the IKEA
batteries to the Panasonic Eneloops that are also made in Japan. 40 batteries cost me $65.42 with taxes and shipping included. I've been paying three to four times that price for my batteries.

I'm still playing with the welders but my skill has improved to the point of making some packs that I need ASAP. A lot quicker than soldering and I have room for 6 welds on each battery post. Once I got the temperature set
I have to tear the strips to remove them and the spot weld stays on the battery terminal. I like having the welding tips in my hands, I can see where I'm welding better. Links below, Cheers Floyd

https://www.banggood.com/6-Gears-Min...N&rmmds=search

https://www.banggood.com/Portable-DI...N&rmmds=search

https://www.ikea.com/ca/en/p/ladda-r...1-2v-00509814/

[cicopo]

Very interesting. Thanks.

[jsparky]

I just bought this one from amazon..

Thanks for the heads up on this one Floyd... it could have some very practical uses.. but will let you know better in the next day or two..

https://www.amazon.ca/Portable-Machi...dDbGljaz10cnVl

[jsparky]

I got the above welder the other day and spent a bit of time playing with it of course..

So here is what I got.. If you plan to do lipo tabs.. then it seems that a probe on each side with a low power setting seems to do extremely well.. tore the metal apart, not the weld..

And again with adding a tab to a battery,, worked about the same on a medium power setting.. tore out the metal..

It would also seem that , just giving the surface a bit of cleaning with some fine sand paper also improved the weld..

As the manufacture said.. use a light pressure on the probes ,, if you push down to hard , the resistance at the weld point can be reduced , causing a poor weld..

I think this could be a very handy tool for some projects..