JP spot welder

[fechter]

That's strange then.

About the only other things that come to mind are using enough pressure on the electrodes, making sure the nickel surface is clean and free of any contaminants (like oil), and maybe the electrode material. I use solid copper wire for electrodes on mine and get great results with .15 nickel, but I have not tried 0.2 nickel.

[Cowardlyduck]

I've had good success with this seller:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/18650-L ... c4dOjccJ1
Still using a 1kg roll of 0.15 x 7mm I bought several years ago (nearly used it all now), and I just ordered a new roll of 0.15 x 8mm that's yet to arrive.

They have 0.2 x 10mm rolls for a decent price.

Cheers

[Offroader]

I've had good success with this seller:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/18650-L ... c4dOjccJ1
Still using a 1kg roll of 0.15 x 7mm I bought several years ago (nearly used it all now), and I just ordered a new roll of 0.15 x 8mm that's yet to arrive.

They have 0.2 x 10mm rolls for a decent price.

Cheers

Did you test the nickel to make sure its 100%, with grinding or salt water? pretty much all of the nickel you buy will be fake and unless you test it you won't know.

[Cowardlyduck]

Did you test the nickel to make sure its 100%, with grinding or salt water? pretty much all of the nickel you buy will be fake and unless you test it you won't know.

Yes, tested by scraping and leaving in salt water over night. I wouldn't have built 4 packs from this roll already if I wasn't sure it is pure nickel.

Cheers

[ALLVLTS]

Hi ES,
I hope everyone is doing well.
It's been a long time but I finally just set up the new JP spot welder I bought last year (health issues always get in the way of fun), and I think I fried something. Could be a couple causes.

12V battery is an Optima Redtop, 720 CCA, 4.5 years old though pulled from my SUV still working fine. Should be good for this.
I hooked everything up properly but of course slipped and arced the wrench between the battery terminals on the last bolt (shouldn't play with power while sleep deprived... but hard to realize that while sleep deprived!). I was hoping that it didn't do anything to the welder since it wasn't shorted *through* the welder, but the negative terminal was connected at that point (not the 12V power supply yet, though).

I finished setting up then tried to weld a salvaged nickel strip onto an old (fully discharged) 18650 to practice. Nothing happened. The pot was turned all the way CCW, so I turned it CW to about 25% and tried again. When I hit the pedal I got full battery power and it vaporized the nickel and put a crater into the cell... Huge pop and sparks. I should have stopped and troubleshot right there, but still not thinking straight, I turned it all the way back CCW and tried again. This time as soon as the leads touched the cell, BAM, full battery power and huge sparks again *WITHOUT* touching the pedal. Yikes! I stopped there and put a voltmeter on the leads, had full batt voltage (12.8V). It was then that I noticed my 12V power supply had an intermittent connection, so that may have had something to do with it?

I disconnected the power supply and the pedal, and STILL had full voltage between the leads. I pulled the welder off the battery and checked continuity between the connection points and had some resistance, increasing with time (as if a cap were charging). I put it away then and waited for a new 12V power supply. Couple days later, there was a high resistance between the leads (didn't think to record the resistance... still sleeping very badly).

Reconnected to the battery, checked voltage again. It started at about 9 volts then worked its way up to 12.8 over a minute or so without any input (wth?). I plugged in the new 12V PS to see if it changed anything... nope. After reading over this entire thread again I realized I hadn't checked or seen the green LED, so I plugged in the pedal and pressed then saw 2 flashes. Increasing the pot increased the brightness of the flashes, so I feel like that part is working.

On page 37 of this thread it was mentioned that a similar failure had meant one of 3 things... Bad PIC, bad mosfet driver, or blown mosfets. Given the novella I just wrote, can anyone tell me how to determine where the fault lies? Whatever it is, I can replace it as a part of my job is to install or replace PCA components, I just don't know how to troubleshoot this one further.

Jakov, if it is a damaged PIC, do you have a new one that I can purchase from you at this time?

Thanks, all.

[fechter]

Sounds like you blew the MOSFETs. It's a good sign if the LED still blinks.

[NetPro]

I've had good success with this seller:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/18650-L ... c4dOjccJ1
Still using a 1kg roll of 0.15 x 7mm I bought several years ago (nearly used it all now), and I just ordered a new roll of 0.15 x 8mm that's yet to arrive.

They have 0.2 x 10mm rolls for a decent price.

Cheers

Very good. That is what I was looking for.
If the 0.15 sold by that merchant was good stuff, as you have confirmed, I am willing to take a chance on his 0.20 stock and see if bad nickel strips is the reason for sticking electrodes.
I have placed an order and will report once I get it.

Thanks a bunch!

[NetPro]

That's strange then.

About the only other things that come to mind are using enough pressure on the electrodes, making sure the nickel surface is clean and free of any contaminants (like oil), and maybe the electrode material. I use solid copper wire for electrodes on mine and get great results with .15 nickel, but I have not tried 0.2 nickel.

I am surprised solid copper wire works for you. I have never tried because I read somewhere that annealed copper wasn't good for electrodes.
I will try AWG 10 and 12 and see what I get.
Using this gizmo I built (welding head) allows me to adjust the spring tension from very light to very, very strong.
I have tried the entire scale with different welders, set at different voltages and current inputs and using different brands of scrap batteries for testing.
Maybe using solid copper wire does the trick. Easy enough to test. . . .

[Cowardlyduck]

Very good. That is what I was looking for.
If the 0.15 sold by that merchant was good stuff, as you have confirmed, I am willing to take a chance on his 0.20 stock and see if bad nickel strips is the reason for sticking electrodes.
I have placed an order and will report once I get it.

Thanks a bunch!

No worries

On a different note, I've never been a huge fan of the large copper tips supplied with my JP. They do the job, but make pinpoint close welds difficult.
I prefer a much smaller point at the end so I tried various things like filing, grinding with a dremel, but nothing I tried was very quick or easy.

So I came up with this idea...why not use a steel pencil sharpener:

After a bit of effort:

I started by hand but that quickly got old and started to hurt my hand.

So instead I switch to automatic mode

The results speak for themselves:

Only downside is the mess and slight loss of copper...but the lost copper was not usable anyway.

I recommend holding the sharpener tight with some pliers though...I found out the hard way what happens when it catches and spins in your hand.

Testing has proven successful with a bunch of welds doing very well and I can now much more easily manoeuvre the tips.

Cheers

[NetPro]

No worries

On a different note, I've never been a huge fan of the large copper tips supplied with my JP. They do the job, but make pinpoint close welds difficult.
I prefer a much smaller point at the end so I tried various things like filing, grinding with a dremel, but nothing I tried was very quick or easy.

So I came up with this idea...why not use a steel pencil sharpener:
DSC_5251.JPG
After a bit of effort:
DSC_5252.JPG
I started by hand but that quickly got old and started to hurt my hand.

So instead I switch to automatic mode
DSC_5253.JPG

The results speak for themselves:
DSC_5255.JPG

Only downside is the mess and slight loss of copper...but the lost copper was not usable anyway.
DSC_5257.JPG
I recommend holding the sharpener tight with some pliers though...I found out the hard way what happens when it catches and spins in your hand.

Testing has proven successful with a bunch of welds doing very well and I can now much more easily manoeuvre the tips.

Cheers

Using a pencil sharpener to re-dress the electrode tips is an excellent tip

Not sure how long the blades that come with the sharpeners will last though, specially with the hard copper of which some electrodes are made. (I have a couple of them from different sources and some are harder than others)

But how about this
Buy a diamond sharpening card, cut a piece using the steel blade as a template and replace the stock one (face down, or course).
These sharpeners are very long lasting, come in different grits and might work well for this purpose.
If it works, beats having to mount the electrodes in the lathe and doing all the setup required to do this kind of work.

Great tip!

[fechter]

I did something similar only used my bench grinder instead of a pencil sharpener. Spin the electrode with a drill and hold at an angle against the grinder while it is running. Makes fast work of it but not a super smooth finish.

[ALLVLTS]

Sounds like you blew the MOSFETs. It's a good sign if the LED still blinks.

Thanks for the input. Any way to test them without removing them?

[fechter]

Thanks for the input. Any way to test them without removing them?

You can use an ohmmeter to measure across the drain to source but since they are all in parallel, if any one shorts, you can't easily tell which one it was without removing them.

[ALLVLTS]

Okay, that's certainly better than nothing... I'll check them out. If any of them are bad then I'd prefer to replace all of them anyway (then I can find out which were bad just because I'm curious). Thanks again.

[fechter]

Okay, that's certainly better than nothing... I'll check them out. If any of them are bad then I'd prefer to replace all of them anyway (then I can find out which were bad just because I'm curious). Thanks again.

Yes, that's a good plan. Replace all of them with parts from the same batch.

[NetPro]

I've had good success with this seller:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/18650-L ... c4dOjccJ1
Still using a 1kg roll of 0.15 x 7mm I bought several years ago (nearly used it all now), and I just ordered a new roll of 0.15 x 8mm that's yet to arrive.

They have 0.2 x 10mm rolls for a decent price.

Cheers

Very good. That is what I was looking for.
If the 0.15 sold by that merchant was good stuff, as you have confirmed, I am willing to take a chance on his 0.20 stock and see if bad nickel strips is the reason for sticking electrodes.
I have placed an order and will report once I get it.

Thanks a bunch!

The 0.20 nickel arrived a few days ago and I am happy to report it appears to be the real thing.
I first folded over a couple a piece about 2 inches long and took it to the grinder.
Though, I saw a couple of little sparks here and there, it was pretty much spark-free, when compared to a known nickel-plated ribbon.

So, sanded down about 0.05 on each side and put it in water with table salt for three days now and I don't see ANY rust whatsoever.
By the way, high quality Brown & Sharphe micrometer confirms 0.20 MM for the thickness.
As far as how it welds, if using the kWeld welder with the thick electrodes it comes with, pretty darn good.

Using any other electrodes, my forever-going sicking problem is still there. In any case, I can get a properly formed nugget when I adjust electrode pressure and the current and/or time carefully.

[Cowardlyduck]

The 0.20 nickel arrived a few days ago and I am happy to report it appears to be the real thing.
I first folded over a couple a piece about 2 inches long and took it to the grinder.
Though, I saw a couple of little sparks here and there, it was pretty much spark-free, when compared to a known nickel-plated ribbon.

So, sanded down about 0.05 on each side and put it in water with table salt for three days now and I don't see ANY rust whatsoever.
By the way, high quality Brown & Sharphe micrometer confirms 0.20 MM for the thickness.
As far as how it welds, if using the kWeld welder with the thick electrodes it comes with, pretty darn good.

Using any other electrodes, my forever-going sicking problem is still there. In any case, I can get a properly formed nugget when I adjust electrode pressure and the current and/or time carefully.

Awesome!
Yeah, I can also report that (for the second time now) this seller has legit pure nickel. I did the same salt water test, and then promptly forgot about it for a week...if it doesn't rust after a week it aint gonna.
Here is my result:

DSC_5258.JPG (71.14 KiB) Viewed 1830 times

DSC_5259.JPG (59.32 KiB) Viewed 1830 times

The brown stuff in the water is from the salt I used...only salt I could find at the time was Himalayan rock salt.

Haven't measured the thickness, but it is about 1mm wider than the 7mm stuff I got last time, so spot on since this time I ordered 8mm wide.

I was hoping for 0.2x8mm stuff, but it seems this was the one size they didn't have.

Cheers

[fechter]

You could just use a magnet to see if it's nickel plated steel.

[Offroader]

You could just use a magnet to see if it's nickel plated steel.

Nope, 99% nickel is also magnetic so a magnet will tell you nothing.

Instead of salt water use Hydrogen Peroxide , vinegar, and salt and that will really speed up the test to almost instantly start to bubble and corrode. Salt water will rust steel nickel strips but it takes like over 24 hours or so to show anything.

Best is probably just to grind it, yeah you will get a couple of sparks with nickel but nothing like you would with steel.

If that .2 nickel is real I recommend to buy some from the link because it is difficult to find genuine .2 nickel.

.2 nickel is probably as thick as you can go before the weld becomes too weak. .3 nickel is too thick and you will not get good welds.

[Cowardlyduck]

For those not following the Stealth Futr thread, here is how I recently made a HUGE battery using my JP.



The tip sharpening and booster subpack I added to my JP certainly made this a much easier build than it otherwise would have been.

Cheers

[fechter]

For those not following the Stealth Futr thread, here is how I recently made a HUGE battery using my JP.

The tip sharpening and booster subpack I added to my JP certainly made this a much easier build than it otherwise would have been.

Cheers

Awesome! I wish I worked that fast.

[riba2233]

Hi everyone!

I'm excited to tell you that I have the welders ready to order and ship again.

However, I'm less excited to tell you that this batch which includes 15 assembled and 2 DIY kits will be the last one.

I want to thank everyone who bought the welder, believed in me and my product, and of course big thanks to this awesome community which inspired me to make all of this happen.

I'm moving to another project, which will hopefully turn into a full time deal for me. I will post the details once I have everything ready, and I think it will be interesting for a lot of you guys here.

Thank you all once more, and if you'd like to order and get the JP spot welder while you still can, please send me private message and I will give you all the info on ordering process.

[captain387]

I'm moving to another project, which will hopefully turn into a full time deal for me. I will post the details once I have everything ready, and I think it will be interesting for a lot of you guys here.

Hmmm BMS's

[fechter]

Good luck with your new work. I sure got my money's worth out of my welder so far. Still working perfect.

Img_1098A.jpg (115.07 KiB) Viewed 1614 times

[riba2233]

I'm moving to another project, which will hopefully turn into a full time deal for me. I will post the details once I have everything ready, and I think it will be interesting for a lot of you guys here.

Hmmm BMS's

Nope, I would never sell BMS's even if I was pretty confident that I've nailed the design, simply because the responsibility is too high. I was developing it at the same time I've started selling welders, but never got to the prototype phase.

I'm actually developing something PC hardware related.

Good luck with your new work. I sure got my money's worth out of my welder so far. Still working perfect.

Img_1098A.jpg

Thank you a lot, your words and posts have always been very encouraging and helpful to me