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Autodark Welding Helmet Repair

The Harbor Freight autodarkening welding helmet with the solar cell actually has two coin cell batteries inside, and when they get weak, the autodarkening ceases to function Some times this happens in a little over a year.

A fellow student in my evening welding class took his apart and documented the repair in the following web page:

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I've also printed this page as a pdf file and uploaded it to the metalworking dropbox since that's a longer term storage site and the instructions will be around two years from now when somebody needs them.

RWL

Reply to
GeoLane at PTD dot NET
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Very nice writeup!

Thanks, R.

--Winston

Reply to
Winston

Downloaded the file and read it.

The name it has in the dropbox, BTW, is:

Harbor_Freight_Autodark_Welding_Helmet_repair.pdf

to save some searching.

Note that there are holders for coin cells which could have been soldered in there in place of the coin cells with the solder tails which you found there. This would allow future replacement of the coin cells without having extra wires and battery boxes inside the hood. Probably a 2032 cell to get the ones without the solder tails for this purpose.

Thanks, DoN.

Reply to
DoN. Nichols

Excellent.

I didn't see how the cells were electrically oriented from the article. Are they 2 separate 3v circuits, in serial for 6v, or in parallel for a higher ampacity 3v circuit?

-- Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air? -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Reply to
Larry Jaques

There are two separate circuits.

If the case were easier to open / could be opened and closed easily, just replacing the coin cells would be the easiest fix, but since the case wasn't meant to be opened, it's best to buy AAA battery holders and run wires through the case to the contacts.

RWL

Reply to
GeoLane at PTD dot NET

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