**DIY Spot Welder Project: A Step-by-Step Guide**

In this project, I'll show you how to build a functional DIY spot welder using an Arduino Pro Mini as the control electronics brain. The goal is to create a device that can be used for welding metal objects together.

To start, we need to connect the mandatory components to the circuit board. This includes a power relay, a MOSFET driver, and other essential parts. I used an Arduino Pro Mini to output the pulse width (Poots) time between 0 and 100 milliseconds. To set this Poots time, I used a simple potentiometer.

For the last inputs, I used a foot switch that activates the welding process when pressed. This pulls the output pin 9 high, which in turn activates the TC4 for 200 watts, then turns on the MOSFET, and finally activates our power relay.

Of course, we shouldn't forget about complementary voltage regulators and decoupling and buffering capacitors, which can be found in the final schematic of this project. I edited all components to a PCB (Printed Circuit Board) and started soldering them together using solder bridges, bridge wire, and flexible wire.

Once the circuit was complete, I hooked up an FTDI breakout board to my computer and connected it to the Arduino Pro Mini. This marked the beginning of programming for the outputs. I used the Adafruit SSD1306 library for this purpose.

The code is based on three main functions: reading in the analog voltage of the potentiometer and converting it into a Poots duration, which is then displayed on an OLED display; using external interrupts to activate the foot switch when pressed; and setting up a timer counter that counts up to a previously set value representing the welding duration.

After uploading the code and connecting 12 volts power as well as the foot switch to the circuit board, it was time for testing. I hooked up my oscilloscope to ground and the gate of the MOSFETs to see how precise the on times were when activating them with the foot switch.

Next, I used a 10 square millimeter wire to create a power cord that connected to the battery terminals. This included adding adapters to the battery terminals and crimping cable shoes to the wires.

For the final step, I added a longer wire to the minus terminal of the battery and removed its insulation at the end. Since those bare wires would be terrible electrodes, I added tons of solder to them and then used copper nails (snipped off) as the main electrodes.

To test the welder, I set the Poots time to 20 milliseconds and used two nickel strips with a thickness of 0.2 millimeters as test objects. The result was satisfactory, as the nickel strips were inseparable after welding.

In conclusion, this DIY spot welder project has been a successful attempt at creating a functional device using an Arduino Pro Mini as the control electronics brain. The cost was around €90, and I hope you've enjoyed following this step-by-step guide.

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enin a previous DIY or by episode I showed you how to not build a capacitive discharge spot welder so after this failed attempts I got this DK welds which is a well working spot welder that can be powered by a lipo battery it's welding energy can easily be adjusted to create the perfect worlds for all thicknesses of nickel strips and thus is suitable to create DIY battery packs but if you want more information about it then make sure to visit its website where we can also find out that the completed kits costs 167 euro not including a powerful lipo battery which sets you back in about 56 zero that got me thinking though whether there exists a simpler and cheaper spot welder and what I found was this the DIY Arduino battery spot welder according to its schematic it uses obviously an Arduino and a few interface components like an OLED and rotary encoder to set the Poots time of the welds and then it activates a couple thousands of power MOSFETs in parallel to basically short a car battery for the length of the pulse duration to create the welds you can even buy this project as a kids for around 130 euro but I wanted something even simpler without using power MOSFETs as the main power switch so in this small projects inspired by the Arduino battery spot welder I will show you my simplified version which costs around 90 euro and might not deliver the most consistent results but still works well enough nevertheless let's get started this video is sponsored by jl CPC be where you can get ten professional PCBs with any soda mask color you like for the low price of only two dollars so feel free to upload yo Gerber files today to order your PCBs from jl CPC be the first component I gots form a crude spot welder was this car battery it's 12 volt voltage is of course standardized and it's capacity of 44 M ours is not that important but the next rating of three hundred and 80 amps was very important which is the cold cranking amps rating in a nutshell it tells us how much current the battery can outputs and cold conditions and for spot welder this value should be above 300 amps for the remaining power electronic components I got this big fuse holder with a fitting 200 amp fuse for safety purposes and this electromagnet battery disconnect switch whose product page will fit spelling error might not seem trustworthy but after testing this component quite a bit I have to say that its maximum current of 1000 amps seems to be correct basically puts it's a big relay which after connecting its coil to 12 volts closes its switch whose contacts we can then use to for example shorter car battery and thus create a welds the remaining mandatory components were pretty much all of those in order to build the control electronics SD brain I used an Arduino Pro Mini which outputs the county said pulls time between 0 and 100 milliseconds on a know--let's to set the Poots time i used a simple potentiometer and for the last inputs i use the foot switch which looks just like you would imagine a foot switch to look like and its job is to start the welding process that means it pulls the output pin 9 high which activates a TC 4 for 200 watts a driver which then turns a MOSFET on which then finally activates our power relay of course we should not forget about complementary voltage regulators and decoupling and buffering capacitors which you can find in the final schematic of this projects according to its I edit all components to a PCB and started soldering them to one another through solder bridges bridge wire orphan flexible wire as soon as the circuit was complete I hooked up an FTDI breakout boards to my computer and connected it spins to the Arduino Pro Mini which means it was time for programming for the outlets I used the Adafruit SSD r1 306 library and for the rest I pretty much only used the timer one the analog read function and the external interrupts zero here's how it works normally the Arduino reads in the analog voltage of the potentiometer and converts it into a pod duration which is then displayed on the ohlet's but if the foot switch is pressed the external interrupts gets activated which firstly turns on the pen nine and thus the relay which starts the welding process at the same time the timer one counter gets set to zero NT compare register 1 to value which represents the previously set welding duration the timer 1 counter now counts up to this compare register value and then turns off the pen 9 and thus stops the welding process afterwards the system returns to its normal modes so after uploading the codes and connecting 12 full power as well as the foot switch to which I had to solder wires before hand and the relay to whose terminals I not only had to add a flyback diodes but also had to cram cable shoes to its connect the wires it was finally time for tests for that I hooked up my oscilloscope rope to ground and the gate of the MOSFETs and tried out a few different pools times which after activating them with the foot switch always led to pretty precise on times of the MOSFETs that means it was time for the power wire ring so I got myself this 10 square millimeter wire and started off by adding adapters to the battery terminals afterwards I used a small piece of wire which I turned on both sides beforehand in order to connect the fuse in series to the plus terminal then followed another shorter length of wire which connects to one side of the relay switch terminals and the fuse and let's not forget that I had to crimp a pretty big cable Schewel to the wire before hands nevertheless next I connected along a wire to the other side of the relay switch terminals from whose and I then removed the insulation last but not least I also added a longer wire to the minus terminal of the battery and removed its insulation at the end as well but since those bare wires would be terrible electrodes I added tons of solder to them and then used copper nails whose had I snipped off as the main electrodes and just like that my crude spot welder was complete and after setting it spools time to 20 milliseconds and using two nickel strips with a thickness of zero point two millimeters as test objects it all seems to work decently well because after the welding the nickel strips were inseparable even thicker nickel strips of 0.3 millimeters can be welded together without a problem by increasing the pool cyma bits and of course welding those nickel strips to 18 650 lithium ion batteries also worked like a charm so all in all of the three different attempts I finally got a functional DIY spot welder which only cost me around 90 euro I hope you enjoyed this video if so don't forget to Like share subscribe stay creative and I will see you next timein a previous DIY or by episode I showed you how to not build a capacitive discharge spot welder so after this failed attempts I got this DK welds which is a well working spot welder that can be powered by a lipo battery it's welding energy can easily be adjusted to create the perfect worlds for all thicknesses of nickel strips and thus is suitable to create DIY battery packs but if you want more information about it then make sure to visit its website where we can also find out that the completed kits costs 167 euro not including a powerful lipo battery which sets you back in about 56 zero that got me thinking though whether there exists a simpler and cheaper spot welder and what I found was this the DIY Arduino battery spot welder according to its schematic it uses obviously an Arduino and a few interface components like an OLED and rotary encoder to set the Poots time of the welds and then it activates a couple thousands of power MOSFETs in parallel to basically short a car battery for the length of the pulse duration to create the welds you can even buy this project as a kids for around 130 euro but I wanted something even simpler without using power MOSFETs as the main power switch so in this small projects inspired by the Arduino battery spot welder I will show you my simplified version which costs around 90 euro and might not deliver the most consistent results but still works well enough nevertheless let's get started this video is sponsored by jl CPC be where you can get ten professional PCBs with any soda mask color you like for the low price of only two dollars so feel free to upload yo Gerber files today to order your PCBs from jl CPC be the first component I gots form a crude spot welder was this car battery it's 12 volt voltage is of course standardized and it's capacity of 44 M ours is not that important but the next rating of three hundred and 80 amps was very important which is the cold cranking amps rating in a nutshell it tells us how much current the battery can outputs and cold conditions and for spot welder this value should be above 300 amps for the remaining power electronic components I got this big fuse holder with a fitting 200 amp fuse for safety purposes and this electromagnet battery disconnect switch whose product page will fit spelling error might not seem trustworthy but after testing this component quite a bit I have to say that its maximum current of 1000 amps seems to be correct basically puts it's a big relay which after connecting its coil to 12 volts closes its switch whose contacts we can then use to for example shorter car battery and thus create a welds the remaining mandatory components were pretty much all of those in order to build the control electronics SD brain I used an Arduino Pro Mini which outputs the county said pulls time between 0 and 100 milliseconds on a know--let's to set the Poots time i used a simple potentiometer and for the last inputs i use the foot switch which looks just like you would imagine a foot switch to look like and its job is to start the welding process that means it pulls the output pin 9 high which activates a TC 4 for 200 watts a driver which then turns a MOSFET on which then finally activates our power relay of course we should not forget about complementary voltage regulators and decoupling and buffering capacitors which you can find in the final schematic of this projects according to its I edit all components to a PCB and started soldering them to one another through solder bridges bridge wire orphan flexible wire as soon as the circuit was complete I hooked up an FTDI breakout boards to my computer and connected it spins to the Arduino Pro Mini which means it was time for programming for the outlets I used the Adafruit SSD r1 306 library and for the rest I pretty much only used the timer one the analog read function and the external interrupts zero here's how it works normally the Arduino reads in the analog voltage of the potentiometer and converts it into a pod duration which is then displayed on the ohlet's but if the foot switch is pressed the external interrupts gets activated which firstly turns on the pen nine and thus the relay which starts the welding process at the same time the timer one counter gets set to zero NT compare register 1 to value which represents the previously set welding duration the timer 1 counter now counts up to this compare register value and then turns off the pen 9 and thus stops the welding process afterwards the system returns to its normal modes so after uploading the codes and connecting 12 full power as well as the foot switch to which I had to solder wires before hand and the relay to whose terminals I not only had to add a flyback diodes but also had to cram cable shoes to its connect the wires it was finally time for tests for that I hooked up my oscilloscope rope to ground and the gate of the MOSFETs and tried out a few different pools times which after activating them with the foot switch always led to pretty precise on times of the MOSFETs that means it was time for the power wire ring so I got myself this 10 square millimeter wire and started off by adding adapters to the battery terminals afterwards I used a small piece of wire which I turned on both sides beforehand in order to connect the fuse in series to the plus terminal then followed another shorter length of wire which connects to one side of the relay switch terminals and the fuse and let's not forget that I had to crimp a pretty big cable Schewel to the wire before hands nevertheless next I connected along a wire to the other side of the relay switch terminals from whose and I then removed the insulation last but not least I also added a longer wire to the minus terminal of the battery and removed its insulation at the end as well but since those bare wires would be terrible electrodes I added tons of solder to them and then used copper nails whose had I snipped off as the main electrodes and just like that my crude spot welder was complete and after setting it spools time to 20 milliseconds and using two nickel strips with a thickness of zero point two millimeters as test objects it all seems to work decently well because after the welding the nickel strips were inseparable even thicker nickel strips of 0.3 millimeters can be welded together without a problem by increasing the pool cyma bits and of course welding those nickel strips to 18 650 lithium ion batteries also worked like a charm so all in all of the three different attempts I finally got a functional DIY spot welder which only cost me around 90 euro I hope you enjoyed this video if so don't forget to Like share subscribe stay creative and I will see you next time