Sput welder, where can I buy one of these?

[luminous]

Originally Posted by blackcote

Very nice clean unit. Looks promising. What 'technological advancements have you made on it? Since it discharges after 30 seconds, does that mean it holds a constant charge for 30 seconds or gradually reduces as time goes on? How bout charge time, what's typical for your work as I'm sure the power setting would determine various charge times? Are you getting hooked up with a distributor or plan to handle sales yourself?

Thanks for the compliment! I've tried to do a quality job of it.

Yes, it keeps itself fully charged during the 30 second "ready" period. A weld made 29 seconds after the ready light comes on should be identical to one made 2 seconds after the light comes on. After the timeout period, the ready light goes out and the unit discharges and waits for the start button to be pushed again. I find that 30 seconds of ready time is plenty for my work style, but the delay could be extended to a minute or so if I get requests for a longer time period.

Most of the welds I make (in my real world, not just testing) probably fall into the range of 25-50 Joules.
Approximate charge times are:
15 J = 10 sec.
25 J = 15 sec
40 J = 20 sec.
60 J = 24 sec.
100 J = 33 sec.

It has short circuit protection and wont try and charge if the output leads are shorted together, and it's designed around modern well proven switching regulator technology using mostly surface mount parts. (damn those 0603 sized resistors and capacitors are tiny)

The capacitor bank uses good high surge current rated caps and appropriate peak current limiting so they should live a long healthy life and not die a quick death like cheap caps do when presented with repetitive high current loads. Reliability is good. I like reliable tools.

I don't know what to do about a distributor yet. I can push them on my own, but I'd love if someone like Caswell would show a serious interest.
I really don't know how much markup a distributor usually gets on items like this, and I'm already having trouble getting the cost down to a reasonable level. It's an expensive mother to produce, both in parts and labor, and it also hinges on how many 1000's of $ I'm willing to put into parts up front to get a decent quantity discount on the parts. And how many I think I might reasonably sell in a year...

If I could spend the money up front to get 100,000 of them made in china for me, and get Walmart to distribute them for me, I'll bet I could get the price WAY down!

Wanna be a distributor?

steve