Fuse Wire Welder Prototype

[TinkerGear]

New user here, I normally post in the Facebook groups. I wanted to share progress on my fuse wire welding attachment I'm in the process of prototyping. This is V1.4 and I'm pretty happy with its performance. The intent was to make it as easy as possible to weld fuse wire to lithium cells and bus bars instead buying expensive precut nickel strip, PCB's with fuse traces, or damaging your cells by soldering the fuse wires.

V1.4 is capable of welding 26AWG tinned copper wire, roughly equivalent to a 20A fuse. With improvements to the design I'm hoping to weld 24AWG wire, and maybe even weld aluminum wire to Tesla Model 3 cells which is what started me on this project in the first place.

Questions, comments, or criticism welcome!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnsE3qFq3Rg

 

[Hwy89]

I am impressed.
Do you have plans to sell these in the future?

 

[e-beach]

How hot do the cells get? It looks like a lot of heat is produced.

 

[TinkerGear]

I am impressed.
Do you have plans to sell these in the future?

Once I'm happy with the design I will be selling these with the Nano cordless spot welder. I have plans to make a larger Kweld version if there is enough interest to either sell or release plans for as well.

How hot do the cells get? It looks like a lot of heat is produced.

In the close-up shots I left the timing turned way too high for the wire gauge I was using. Probably should have thought of that before I put a video on the internet! Once dialed in there are no heat marks on 34-28awg fuse, but once you get into 26awg they are a bit unavoidable from my experience.

 

[e-beach]

So then, you haven't used an infrared thermometer to check the heat of the cell, before and after the weld?

 

[TinkerGear]

So then, you haven't used an infrared thermometer to check the heat of the cell, before and after the weld?

I have not yet, I have focused on prototyping the attachment up to this point. An IR thermometer isn't ideal to measure temperature of a reflective metal surface, but I'll see if I can get some data for you.

 

[e-beach]

I have never had inaccurate temperature readings with my infrared thermometer due to reflectivity of metals, however any accurate measurement you choose will help the rest of us. As you know, heat is damaging to lithium cells.