Recommend Spot Welder
 

I have a portable spot welder I bought to connect nickel battery tabs. It was garbage and would only weld a couple tabs before being too low energy to make an OK connection. I don't even consider them that ok. Then it died.

All the highest rated spot welders on Amazon are portable. Then there's bench welders that all have lower ratings and are about 4x the price.

No reviews say they can weld 2mm nickel reliably.

Anyone know of any product capable of making good welds on battery tabs? Seems like the market is flooded with junk that doesn't work and there's nothing at any price for consumers.

Link is a dead end, but I've got one of these:

https://external-content.duckduckgo....d2e&ipo=images
https://external-content.duckduckgo....d2e&ipo=images

This comes with a spotwelding head

I got the harbor freight 240v one.
Turns out they are good for making sten guns.

I only see this, which is suitable for joining sheet metal or something, but wouldn't be capable of joining battery tabs

https://www.harborfreight.com/240v-s...der-61206.html

What -- exactly -- are you trying to accomplish?

"connect nickel battery tabs"

https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/HLB1RS.YX...ape-For-Li.jpg

So the pincer-style spot welder is right out. Try renting the style in #2.

Have you considered a laser?

I did see something on Alibaba marketed as an untrasonic welder for $8,000.

When I say I'm willing to pay any price, I mean any reasonable price for achieving the correct temperature for the correct duration to sufficiently fuse nickel with steel.

*Oops, just realized I've been incorrectly saying zinc instead of nickel. Corrected.

May need to build your own I bet there's a few on youtube.

Yep, was afraid of that.

Every now and again it surprises me when I need to invent something, but then again those are market opportunities. You'd think making battery packs was a common enough thing there'd be a fantastic tool.

I did invent a white LED headlamp in 1999 by soldering in my own resistors and LEDs into a bulb I crushed and wired everything into.

Invented supercapacitor battery per Lasersaber's success.

I'll reiterate that solving the problem that most troubles you and making it available for purchase is probably the most straightforward path to financial wellbeing. I call those million dollar ideas, which I used to dream up with more frequency because youth is more creative. I'm down to about one a month these days.

Ideas are a dime a dozen. I've had a few myself.

First principles first. Does it need to be welded at all? Would a gas-tight connection suffice?

What solution would en-tool you to face additional challenges in the future?

Eh, you start with screwdrivers and the collection grows from there, and before you know it you've got strut spring compressors, battery capacity meters, and the contemplation of an oscilloscope.

I'm trying to pull current sufficient to start a vehicle from small cells in series. Good connections are required.

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A very informative video.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=231qtaRIs3M



Link to a 18650 spot welder

https://www.ebay.com/itm/30442246160...Bk9SR_a3yuuVYQ


This is not a endorsement.

I have no personal experience with this welder.

Though it looks like it gets the job done…



:turtle:

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Many use the transformer out of a microwave oven, but I am fairly certian there is some disassembly and rewinding involved. Harbor fright used to have a decent cheapo spotwelder, not good enough for production but adequate for home use. ( low cycle duty)

I have a parked 2.5 kw 48 volt server UPS that probably has transformers capable,, but it weighs a hundred pounds

I have that one it's my sten gun spot welder. It can to a several welds before it needs to cool off for a while. Still only about a 3% duty cycle.

2mm thick nickel strips? Muh gawd thats thick. Why?

I don't know if that's necessary yet.

I'm trying to start a car with these cells, so I need to be able to pass 250 amps through them.

I think most of the spot welders for sale are geared more towards hobbyists making batteries for "toys" like remote controlled cars, drones, ect.

i would think 2mm would be bolt on or you will need to spot weld and stack multiple strips. i think my headway cells that will start a car were like $50 with the 1.5mm thick bolt on nickel strips

What I really need is for the batteries to come with threaded terminals.

I've got something like this for my Maxwell supercaps

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/...AC_SL1451_.jpg

Tesa and Westinghouse would recognize the bus bar construction.

Meanwhile, they're working on solid state batteries configured as a card, that can be stacked and compresed together into a deck of any height/voltage.
From TFA:

Have you looked at the Glitter 801B? It worked well for soldering up a bike battery pack.

My preference would be some benchtop device, but for some reason they all are rated worse than the battery devices. Could be some sort of uneven distribution of shill ratings, but it has me curious.

I also wonder why the benchtop devices are at least twice as expensive? Shouldn't not having batteries reduce the cost? Corded things usually cost less than "cordless".

Well, I pulled apart the "broken" welder today and measured the voltage of the battery at 2.0v. Couldn't get it to charge when plugged into the USB C charger.

Tried using my multipurpose hobby charger to charge it, but it complained that the voltage was too low.

Used my switching power supply to bring voltage up enough to where my hobby charger would charge, and then boosted until the regular onboard USB charger would take over.

Unit is as good as ever, which isn't great. Doesn't make good welds. Good chance it's the operator.

Have you try tack welding with car batteries and some sort of rod that is appropriate for nickel? I would try it in an unfinished room like a grage or outside first lol but its doable.

Only with a screwdriver, carelessly working on a car near the battery.

I'll practice a bit more with this unit. Initially I had been using lots of pressure and maximized the tip surface of the welder, but apparently you're supposed to use light pressure and the edge of the tips, creating a higher resistance connection.