Microwave to Spot Welder
From Professr's Lair
Spot Welder
1/10/2010
It works! Nothing caught on fire, and metal melted spectacularly. Next steps: improve the electrodes, maybe put together a relay and controller to time the current pulses, and maybe bolt it all down to a piece of plywood.
1/9/2010
It started out as the giant transformer inside a microwave oven. Now, with the secondary coil cut off and removed, it's going to be able to weld steel sheets and wires.
I have replaced the old secondary coil with two turns of 3 gauge copper wire, which should result in a primary-to-secondary turn ratio of 100:1. Theoretically, this should be capable of giving me 1000 amps - enough to liquefy steel. However, the 3 gauge wire is only rated for 175 amps, so we will see how that goes.
