JP spot welder

So Tesla has a robot that spot welder that welds thousands of cells for their cars.

How feasible does everyone think it would be to mount a JP welder to a 3D printer. Then make some sort of feed in mechanism for the cells and nickle strips, and you've potentially got a semi 'robot' spot welder.
If this were possible, I imagine it would make building packs this way a whole lot more attractive and economical to many.

Cheers
 
There is a guy in the Netherlands offering this service here now who has a $250k machine he did just that with:
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=75838
 
Well it's good to know others have tried this also.

Riba, I think if you were able to incorporate your welder into a cheap 3D printer as a complete product that could do this, you would have one hell of a product that would be very popular. :)
I for one would be prepared to pay 2-3X as much as the current welder for such an off the shelf unit. :)

Cheers
 
How many battery packs are you guys welding that you need robotic equipment?

I have a 3D printer and use it a lot. Strapping a spot welder to a carriage, building in appropriate safeguards and then programming your patterns is going to be fairly complicated and most likely take much much longer than just doing it manually unless you are making lots and lots of large battery packs.

None of the current 3D printing platforms are going to be very good at applying pressure to a strip which is required to get a good weld. Would you just lay all the strips on top and pray nothing moved and shorted out while welding, burning your house down?

I watched the video and even with all the prep work that guy did, his spot welds were off the tabs in several spots because of all the stack up tolerances. Around 1:25 you can see he is missing the back side of the tab and all the Sparks show he is missing also. That is even with him doing 35% of the welding ahead of time on all the ends of the strips to keep them in place during the interior welding.

Lots of work, not seeing the payoff.
 
Some good points dssguy.
I honestly hadn't considered those complexities. I guess I'm just saying it would be a cool tool to have and might be possible to do relatively cheaply (compared to existing devices) using 3D printing technology.
Right now, for my needs I do not need it as I am just making 1-3KWh packs for my E-Bikes, but there are a number of guy's doing car conversions that are not using 18650's because of the insane number of welds and time that would be required.
I'm sure these guy's would be seriously interested in a device like this if it could be made within a reasonable price range.

Cheers
 
So I have welded a pack with the riba welder, used with a standard 60Ah car battery.
With this setup the riba welder packs a bigger punch than my sunkko 788+ welder and can probably handle a higher tempo of welding without getting warm.
Most importantly I can use thicker strips with the riba welder if I want to, and still get solid welds.

The cables and tipsize of the riba welder makes it alittle more work to weld, as I am used to less stiff cables and thinner tips. But this I can modify whenever.
I did however have some odd welds, when a big spark happens and a crater is formed in the nickelstrip from one of the tips. probably 2-3mm wide.
Is this due to some oxide on the tip and bad contact or what could be the reason?

Overall happy with the this welder, good product.
 
I'm looking at making some kind of handle that will hold both electrodes and even the force between them (a simple linkage can do this).
It could resemble a soldering gun. Another thought would be to make this spring loaded with some kind of force gauge. You could even trigger the weld pulse when the force reaches a set point. This kind of arrangement could really speed up the build process.

I agree the cables are a bit stiff. Placing the unit on a platform to raise it can make the cables a little easier to manipulate.
 
Wheazel said:
So I have welded a pack with the riba welder, used with a standard 60Ah car battery.
With this setup the riba welder packs a bigger punch than my sunkko 788+ welder and can probably handle a higher tempo of welding without getting warm.
Most importantly I can use thicker strips with the riba welder if I want to, and still get solid welds.

The cables and tipsize of the riba welder makes it alittle more work to weld, as I am used to less stiff cables and thinner tips. But this I can modify whenever.
I did however have some odd welds, when a big spark happens and a crater is formed in the nickelstrip from one of the tips. probably 2-3mm wide.
Is this due to some oxide on the tip and bad contact or what could be the reason?

Overall happy with the this welder, good product.
Click to expand...


I have seen the crater and huge sparks when the surface underneath is not flat. Such as when you might be on the edge of the positive electrode on a battery. I have seen that happen 2 times and both times one electrode was at the edge of the positive side of the battery. not quite over a flat solid portion.
 
dssguy1 said:
I watched the video and even with all the prep work that guy did, his spot welds were off the tabs in several spots because of all the stack up tolerances. Around 1:25 you can see he is missing the back side of the tab and all the Sparks show he is missing also. That is even with him doing 35% of the welding ahead of time on all the ends of the strips to keep them in place during the interior welding.
Click to expand...

Hi there,
Where did you see that ?
There's no spot missed on the welding apart from the one already done :)

The sparks you see just means that the APC (Automatic Part Conditioning ) of the MacGregor welder is triggering.
This APC is an extra control just before every weld is made to see of there is difference in the material, distance, pressure etc and it automatically adjusts the welding parameters.

Sure doing some hundred cells manually could be a little bit faster but regarding quality control theres no feedback from the welds that are being manually made. That even counts for $$$ costing commercial CD welders which dont have closed-loop control over the welding process. Regarding this means that the JP welder is as good as these commercial CD welders and very well upto the job. Its a whole different playing field compared to closed-loop CD resistance welding.
 
My comments were in reference to anybody thinking they could just strap a welder to a 3D printer for $300-$400 and get similar results as what you have put together.

In reference to my comment about some of your welds being off the tabs, I should have said that you were starting to lose your alignment on the welding around 1:25 of the video. You can see that you are no longer in the middle of the strip and are partially off of it around 1:34 of the video. Hard to see too well with a video taken at 720p and not oriented correctly.....

nO9slYb


http://imgur.com/nO9slYb
 
Ah ok I see what you mean.
It's good to know that someone is looking close :)

At the video i'm using the old electrodes made of solid copper with a 2mm tip and the gap was set a bit (1mm) too far apart.
I'm now using GlidCop electrodes with a 1.5mm tip and with a 2mm gap so there's more room to allow for 'misaligned' strips.
 
Wheazel said:
So I have welded a pack with the riba welder, used with a standard 60Ah car battery.
With this setup the riba welder packs a bigger punch than my sunkko 788+ welder and can probably handle a higher tempo of welding without getting warm.
Most importantly I can use thicker strips with the riba welder if I want to, and still get solid welds.

The cables and tipsize of the riba welder makes it alittle more work to weld, as I am used to less stiff cables and thinner tips. But this I can modify whenever.
I did however have some odd welds, when a big spark happens and a crater is formed in the nickelstrip from one of the tips. probably 2-3mm wide.
Is this due to some oxide on the tip and bad contact or what could be the reason?

Overall happy with the this welder, good product.
Click to expand...

Hi, there are few reasons for that to happen, too low pressure, uneven surfaces, or the thing that dssguy described :) I don't know if you have older or new electrodes, but it never happened to me with new electrodes that are professionally made, it only happened once when I was on the edge of positive pole. If it's happening too often, then you can file the tips to get round shape.
 
I just finished assembling my DIY kit I got from Jacov. It took me an hour to assemble the welder, I did take my time and checked every step twice so as not to make any mistakes. The instructions were super easy to follow and the assembly went very well. Thanks Jacov.

Ray
 
Here's my set up for the fabulous JP Welder. :D I'm afraid recycled 18650 cells and a discarded wall wart from years ago are not worthy of such an incredible welder :lol: but it all works really well. I tried a few welds on leftover cells and this welder sure makes some beautiful, clean and strong welds. Worth every penny.

The pic is large.

http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/... chargers/jp_welder1_zpsmx4w3aon.jpg~original
 
mistercrash said:
Here's my set up for the fabulous JP Welder. :D I'm afraid recycled 18650 cells and a discarded wall wart from years ago are not worthy of such an incredible welder :lol: but it all works really well. I tried a few welds on leftover cells and this welder sure makes some beautiful, clean and strong welds. Worth every penny.

The pic is large.

http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/... chargers/jp_welder1_zpsmx4w3aon.jpg~original
Click to expand...

Nice!

What cells are you using?

Looks like your just trickle charging with a rc charger using that balance tap.
I have a couple hundred cheap LiFePO4 cells kicking about, I wonder how many I would need to string together.
 
Cells are salvaged US18650V Konions from Makita tool packs, they used to be my scooter's battery, I recycled the recycled cells that were recycled. And back to our regular programming selling the JP Welder. 8)
 
Happy to report my new batteries and charger finally came in and I tested my JP welder with nano packs and it works great!
I purchased 4 of these:
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=19153
They are: Turnigy nano-tech 5000mah 3S 65~130C Lipo Pack and by the third test weld I had it working perfect.

At this point I am only interested in welding 0.15 mm and 0.2 mm pure nickel to 16850s and let me tell you, it is a thing of beauty: I am getting the perfect nugget every time.
So, Thanks JP, another success story! Whether by design, magic or luck, these welders work and work well. Thanks again! Just joking, I know it was engineering, hard work and testing.

I will be buying another welder to have as a backup.
It is great to have the power source fit in the palm of your hands at less than 2 Kg; my injured back is appreciating that!
No pictures at this time as I did a quick setup just to test and it wasn't pretty or safe. Took it apart right away and will be building a safe and practical holder this weekend.
 
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