Popular Science magazine had a good emergency welding trick

"Shadowland" wrote: Use battery cables to hook two car battery in series, yielding 24 volts...(clip) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ You will need two batteries. In the middle of the Nevada desert you may wait a long time for another care to come along, and then you have to persuade this stranger, if he stops at all, to let you borrow his battery. But I feel secure--I carry one of those portable jump-start compressor combos. That ought to work.

"Leo Lichtman" wrote: (clip)I carry one of those portable jump-start compressor combos. That ought to work. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Oh, and don't forget to pack a helmet and a few welding rods.

there was a link posted to R.C.M. a couple weeks ago to a picture of a guy in china making-due with a sheet of paper as a welding mask. remember that one you mr. mcgyvers!

b.w.

It is interesting to know that if you have a couple of cars and some jumper cables and some sort of wire to use as an electrode (like a coat hanger) that you could actually do some emergency welding in the middle of nowhere.

Did you know you can actually buy a mig welding system designed to run off of batteries?

"Curt Welch" wrote: It is interesting to know that if you have a couple of cars and some jumper cables and some sort of wire to use as an electrode (like a coat hanger) that you could actually do some emergency welding (clip) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I have done a lot of oxy-acetylene welding with coat hangers, but I don't think it will do arc welding.

The Ready Welder link does not list the price, but, as I recall, they're not cheap.

Wrap the coat-hanger in newspaper and you get a rudimentary cellulosic electrode.

Around $450. I have had one for 4 years. Great machine.

Here's one for $400.00 on Ebay with free shipping:

Coat-hanger with newspaper. Interesting. I never would have thought of that one! :)

I'll second Ernie on the Ready Welders - they work! From their website, it looks like they are used a lot by the Army, but they are also available to civilians. I run mine as a flux core wire feed unit and as an emergency unit if I ever need to weld any aluminum.

This might be a silly question does the ready welder have its own Gas valve?

it seems to be a very affordable spoolgun if i can use it with a miller Synchrowave 200 since the Synch uses a Gas through DINSE connector.

If the Readywelder has its own gas valve then i would connect the bottle to it instead of the Synchrowave and i would set the machine to SMAW (with the polarity appropriate) or if i was doing flux core i'd hook to the machine on SMAW with the opposite polarity.

Am i thinking about that right for te setup?

thanks in advance

Brent Ottawa Canada

I don't know how it works exactly. But it seems to me it must since it's designed to hook to batteries. They have a few different models and they might make one that's basically designed to be used as a spool gun on a stick machine.

Normally, you need a constant voltage power source to do mig or flux core. Stick (SMAW) and Tig machines like the Synchrowave 200 are constant current machines. I don't know what type of results you would get if you tried to do MIG with a constant current machine. It might be workable. You might try calling Ready Welder and asking if their spool gun works on a standard DC stick machine like the Synchrowave 200.

the website said it worked on CC and CV machines I hope there is a user on the group who has used it on a CC power supply to confirm that it works fine and that what i THINK the settings should be are in fact correct

Yes, like most spoolguns, the gas valve is in the trigger.

That is usually how you hook up a spoolgun. The gas goes directly from the bottle to the gun.

Some machines didn't do this, such as the LTEC Migmaster 250 and 260, which passed the spoolgun gas through the machine. BAD idea.

No problem with asking questions. Always a good idea.

I used 3 batteries in series back in the early 60's for repairing my angle iron go-kart.

Bob

Interesting. Good to know...

There are three modes in MIG welding. Short arc, globular, and spray. The short arc really ought to have a constant voltage supply. The wire feeds out, touches the work, and then a big slug of current melts the wire. The wire burns back to where the arc will no longer arc at that voltage, and the cycle starts over.

I am not sure about globular.

But think about spray. Isn't that pretty much like stick welding? Constant arc, distance between the work and the electrode controled by the welder. So why not a constant current supply?

A friend told me that he disconnected the power leads from his 120 volt MIG welder and connected them to his DC stick welder when he had some welding to do that was on material thicker than was convenient to weld with the 120 volt MIG. I had not thought about it a lot, so tried it myself. You can MIG weld with a constant current power source in the spray mode.

Dan