Still on the table boys. Help a poor student pay his bills
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Is this a symptom of anything/fixable? I know 1 side welds weaker more often than not, but this is Kind of annoying, I think the negative probe has outlasted 3 positive ones 
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I rotate back and fourth. Only âsolutionâ Iâve found to keep them kinda even
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Just get the big boys from kweld, they last a lot longer and you can easily sharpen them 
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I actually use 2 welders at once while im welding, pretty much 0 downtime and that wear is after 3 12S4Ps and 2 10S2Ps so its not too fast. Just wondering if there was any kind of a solution to the â1 side welds weak and wears fasterâ (I know you can double weld weak points when you do 6 weld points and sometimes I do that)
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How I understand it itâs just physics, so the only thing you could do is swap them around. That could be wrong though, but personally I canât imagine how.
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Would switching which hand holds the electrode count as swapping them around?
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Nah man, hell I just bought some here from Joey. I had a large roll of it that lasted me decades, but ran out of thinner stock recently. We use similar thickness to make pattern welded (forge) steel (damascus, san mai, go mai, etc) as for building battery packs, but I sort of specialize in designs that utilize thicker plate material than the other guys. Had I known I would end up building batteries like crazy a decade later, Iâd have held onto that roll of a couple hundred feet of 10" wide 0.2mm nickel, probably gave away half of it.
I do have a surplus source of nickel plate from a large aerospace contractor, I typically buy all their âscrapâ, which is often multiple sq ft of matetial thatâs too small for their application. I havenât checked in with them in a while so Iâll touch base and see who their supplier is. Maybe I can find us some deals. If anybody did want really large widths or lengths, I do have some suppliers for pure nickel âstripâ wholesale, but the price fluctuates with the nickel spot price (itâs an increasingly valuable commodity, and Iâd recommend any of you interested in investing to consider it as a long term), and of course wholesale minimums, but thatâs probably not as expensive as youâd think. Can probably beat china prices and have it rolled to any thickness and slit to any width under 4â wide or so. If anybody was really interested in a lifetime supply lol.
Personally I much prefer to have wider stock and shear to width, but I understand Iâm the exception to the rule in terms of equipment to do such.
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Another tip I wanted to offer you guys, maybe it applies maybe not. If any of you guys want a lightning fast way of reshaping your tips, assuming youâre doing it by hand and want a convex tip profile; look into something from jewellery supply houses called a âCup Burâ they come in tons of sizes, theyâre essentially a concave dish on the end of a shaft that is internally cut teeth to dome the end of a rod. I use them to make domed pins, or just to quickly and consistently chamfer rod ends. Like old good quality handfiles they are monsterously efficient at removing material. I use them on steel pins, titanium, etc, and only wear the smaller ones out every 5 years or so.
Put them in a pin vise, any handle with a collet clamp like a graver handle or even just glue it into a drilled hole in a piece of wooden dowel. You will be amazed how with a couple turns of the wrist, youâll have perfectly reshaped tips. You can chuck them in a drill or rotary tool of course, and for high production work that is probably optimal, but I recommend using them manually otherwise, as youâll be less likely to load them excessively and wear them out. Use them dry, on a clean grease free electrode end and then tap them on a bench top or other hard surface gently and the chips will fall out easily.
Iâd probably just buy a small set of various sizes, once you use them youâll find all kinds of uses for them, and Iâd recommend getting them from a Jewelry supply house or from a brand as such. Tooling is the one thing you take a huge risk of getting absolute trash with cheap imports if you dont know for certain theyâre good. You can pickup good quality sets in a small index for $25-30 last I checked.
Anyway, hope this helps someone, I was shaping tips last night and realized how many of you probably doing this the hard way. Even if youâre doing them with a powered grinder, this method is quicker, easier, and more consistent. A tig electrode grinder works well of course also, but more expensive, and I wouldnât want to waste itâs life on this when the cheaper easier option was long figured out by other trades. Let me know if any of you try it.
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haha the moment that wire gets tugged it would pry that weld off
well good, because it needs to be take apart anyways.
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Just like on the negative side.
Even worse. Solder blob and welds are at the end, basically held down by 1 weld
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Well thatâs unfortunateâŚ
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are you not supposed to spot weld the middle of the negative side?
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No you are not, it has been mentioned plenty of times throughout the last few months, but that is where the internal weld is, and if you weld directly to the center, you risk blowthrough
So we weld in circles around it, as you can see on most, if not all, professional builds done on here
If you want reference you can look at pics or check out either of my videos
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yep in the center you are welding on the other side of a weld. no good. Maybe someone could cut a practice cell open and try to show what the internal weld side looks like if you blast a weld into the middle of the outside. Not sure how you would replicate a cells anode internal weld exactly but idk.
probably by not using a practice cell and drain and cut open a couple of OEMs cells
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So this happened
Was trying to solder 3 old salvaged cells in series for my nephews rc toy car. I donât know if it is because they were old or I messed up when I removed the old nickel plated steel.
Scary as fuck, saw the smoke and didnât realize until I saw it spiting sparks/flames. Just had time to run.
Worst of it all, my wife heard it and saw the smoke, she was fucking pissedđ
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Ah a classic magestic flame show. Glad you got out physically unsaved, but your wife is going to remember this moment.
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Fuck!! she wonât let me forget it, thatâs for sure.
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Anyone has safety measure in place? Like some type of fireproof container you can throw on top of the incendiary device when it starts to go to shit?
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