I spent $100 to save 20 bucks... and it was TOTALLY worth it!

[Matrix Prime]

is there a ltt tutorial for building the welder

[Luscious]

22 hours ago, Wh0_Am_1 said:

Of course they would sponsor it, the cells are the one part in a power bank that you would never want to replace. Now this is probably to deflect the primary defect in Anker's power banks, Anker's control boards while safe are short lived, I have had multiple of their Powercore 20100s only survive to 300 cycles, now as those power banks are large, 300 cycles took well over a year to reach, but even still those cells have plenty of life in them. Which is why I have resolved to not buy any more Anker products, at least until they can add a control board that lasts.

I have an Energizer XP8000 (the original XPAL branded one made by TennRich) that I bought around 2010. While I haven't yet run it through 300 cycles it STILL performs as new to this day 10 years later. The only reason I didn't go with the larger XP18000 at the time was I wanted something that could stash in a jacket pocket. I have used this little brick to power everything from smartphones, 4G hot spots, tablets, netbooks, notebooks and even a surface pro through it's docking station.

 

Probably my most hilarious use case was when I plugged in one of those bendy 5V USB fans into it, put it next to my plate at the dinner table and used it to cool my boiling hot soup

 

Later models of the XP8000 and higher dropped the XPAL branding and also used lesser quality cells/internals. I know this because they tend to fail prematurely like the Anker junk. Not sure of the reliability of the current crop of Energizer gear, but I did get my sister a newer UE20018 last year that's being performing well for her.

 

In my case I needed higher capacity so I went with Bixnet. They have a HUGE selection of power packs and are local to me so I can pick up my order sans shipping. I grabbed their 100WHr pack just last year that has the special Surface connector to power my Surface Go. This is the only external battery pack on the market that can power Microsoft's surface gear and it works fantastic. I have gotten probably close to 16 hours run time with this combination.

 

I also have two of their beefy 220WHr power banks that I can chain together to run my XPS laptop. I honestly could not measure how long this went because even after a full day of use the pack would only drop one out of four bars. I also bought with it a DC-DC converter with multiple tips that I can use to power various gear and a compact 150W PSW inverter for stuff that isn't DC friendly. The entire kit can fit in a small back pack.

 

BTW: I would never buy Anker or touch their stuff with a barge pole. Their original Powerhouse was an absolute mess - the DC jack would fail after maybe 5 uses, the batteries inside weren't user serviceable and it had other serious wiring issues as well. The new Goal Zero Yeti 200X is where you want to start for a small easy-to-carry solar generator, better designed, longer warranty and they have the panels for it as well.

[DerekRedden]

A parts list with links to them and how to build the the exact spot welder in the video would be nice. 

[jammer2001]

can I get the materials list for the spot welder?

[ColinLTT]

On 4/25/2020 at 9:48 PM, jammer2001 said:

can I get the materials list for the spot welder?

 

On 4/22/2020 at 3:32 PM, DerekRedden said:

A parts list with links to them and how to build the the exact spot welder in the video would be nice. 

in the interest of safety I won't be providing one - instead I'd suggest a kWeld kit. I just got one in hand and the build quality is excellent, and function looks to be leaps and bounds ahead of the sketchy creation I made. Look for it on an upcoming ShortCircuit! 

[Bombastinator]

On 4/25/2020 at 11:48 PM, jammer2001 said:

can I get the materials list for the spot welder?

The small one I’m talking (not the big one they did a video on) about was used for ecigarettes.  Primarily welding resistance wire to non resistance wire end to end (which was really important for some no longer used atomizer designs) it was found though that it could also spot weld 18650 batteries.  It wouldn’t do all of them.  The connecting strip and the thickness of the metal of the point being soldered to had to be planned for but there were people who made it work.  There were instructions on full diy, kits, and full devices.  It’s several years old because the type of atomizers that required resistance-non resistance wires generally stopped being used.  It would be available in the archives of www.e-cigarette-forum.com

 

The basic idea is you don’t need to do spot welds very fast, so instead of running right off the battery you put the juice through a capacitor that builds up the required charge.  It’s how camera strobes work.  Doing this you can get a whole lotta voltage out of a little tiny battery.  It’s just slower.  20sec a weld perhaps (it varies)

[foldingNoob]

On 4/22/2020 at 7:05 AM, Bombastinator said:

Ummm...  you can make a diy spotwelder sufficient for welding battery contacts out of the flash of a disposable camera.  They’re about the size of a hockey puck.  The trick is you use a capacitor.  The disposable cameras have both a battery and a capacitor of about the right size.  All you need is a welded point.  You don’t need a spot half an inch across.  You could weld car plate with that thing.

we did this in high school to electrocute people and make chairs spark

[Bombastinator]

7 minutes ago, foldingNoob said:

we did this in high school to electrocute people and make chairs spark

Heh.

 

In my high school the dangerous chemistry thing was some asshat mixed up some foul smelling thing (wasn’t putrizine but something easier but still pretty unhealthy) and was spraying it at people.  There was another one where someone found an old Leyden jar in a back room, charged it up, and challenged people to try to take the top off.  In college it was ammonium tri-iodide painted on things.  I found three purple spots on a toilet where the seat met the bowl at my dad’s research lab in one of the bathrooms.  God knows how long they were there.  Ammonium tri-iodide leaves a very bright very permanent very indicative purple stain