Thx fellas. Appreciate the help.
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yeah, or fall off. basically, if the connection is weak the current will bottleneck there and show its love for you by warming up and glowing with joy
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Ya second joint looks much the same. Think I might need a higher wattage iron. 70 isn’t cutting it. Think I might just pick up a big ol’ 100 or 150. Just annoying to have to shell out for a bigger iron that I’ll almost never use 
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I have a 60w Weller and it’s just enough if I work quick and clean. Once the joint starts going peaky on me the iron does not have enough heat to power through and I have to start again clean (I like this, kind of?)
Clean is the key for me, any of that shmeg on the work or the soldering tip and the joint is doomed. I like to have everything in position, bright, shiny, clean and fluxed before I start.
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One thing i’ve read and is the next thing I’m trying to put into practice for these welds to large copper is that the thermal mass of the tip is important. helps compete with the thermal mass of the thing you’re welding too. so make sure you’re using a bigger tip.
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Readers of this thread may find this interesting:
doesn’t work with kweld yet, but he’s thinking about it.
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I picked this up for £32.90 there are other sellers selling the same thing, if price is imperative and you don;t plan on crimping anything else ever again(unlikely) you can get a manual one for as little as £10 probably
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Did u crimp the 8awg onto the xt90? Didn’t even know that was possible…
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Nope the probes require crimping to lugs to secure them to the pcb, also the probes themselves can be crimped on to probe leads
Edit: you may have paid for assembled leads in which case no crimping tool required!
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I did indeed good sir.
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Who has the BOM for the kweld…
I had my power supply i use set to 55 volts and forgot my kweld was plugged in
The buck converter inside? Or something dc dc related made a weird ass noise and now the kweld is inconsistent and does weird shit.
Not to self… Don’t be stupid
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Can you tell me more of the module’s behavior now? Does the LCD turn on, do you see messages? You can also measure the voltage across the large electrolytic cap, that should be 10V. Try running through CAL with a bench supply and record all data that you get.
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Crap. Keep forgetting to buy the USB module
It does amazing.welds still. Just freaks out sometimes
Where do I buy the programming cable. I want to get more data from the welds on a screen for the fun of it. Kweld USA doesn’t have and they claim it’s firmware only
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I’ll be home in 3 hours and I’ll pull it apart and start checking values for you
Also would love to talk about double k cap setups. One K-Cup doesn’t seem to be enough so we always by 2 / welder
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I have mine in parralel and they work great just takes ages for them go empty
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6 hours with a fan on. I hook up a carbon stack resistor and pull more. It’s funny how much per is left after you turn off
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I’m using a 4s lipo on this kweld.
It goes from 10v to 3.3 randomly, or when I turn on auto welding mode
Also. The protection devices. Can’t find online on digikey or anywhere. Keith at kweld USA had a few I begged off of him and I reworked them on. ( I bridged a 5s (20volts through the leads. My fault)
Do you have a part number and replacement option?
Also. I would like to get live data via serial on a larger screen and other info if available . I read we can hook up our computer to this and get more data
I weld .2mm nickel at a rate of 45-70 welds a minute with a 2 kcap setup and other then the wires getting hot, this machine is amazing. ( I have 2 sets of electrodes and wires and fans on the wires so they cool down . The electrodes not in use are in ice water cooling off while the others are heating up from constant welds.
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Keith in the US has them, I have just sent him a message because he is probably not aware of this “undocumented feature” (my fault in that case).
If you weld 0.3mm nickel then that’s true. Single kCap supports 0.2mm max.
A trick helps: directly short the probes and fire a few pulses, this will quickly drain them down to < 4V.
I see. Looks like something is pulling down the 10V supply randomly. Can you spot a component that is getting hot in this condition? Does the LCD still stay on?
The small TVS diodes are Littelfuse SMDJ28A, the big ones are Littelfuse SLD8S28A.
Yes, same process as described in the firmware update section, but just stop after having made connection via ExtraPutty.
What I do is have a bowl of water on the bench (with safety distance to the delicate stuff) and periodically dip the tips for cooling, then wipe dry. This avoids having to swap them.
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Thanks for all the replies.
I found that one k cap is not sufficient for .2
3s3p would prob work on the super caps.
As for the component that is getting hot,. I’ll pull out a flir gun and check. Lcd does stay on.
We’re good here. Thanks for making the best welder out there. My only wish is to give a pre pulse like the maltronics, and a Bluetooth phone app. Just for fun love stats
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