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=Question=
#redirect [[Welder]]
 
Regarding your comment on a 'datalogging constant current/constant voltage AC/DC MIG+TIG+Plasma cutter with HF starting, controllable pulse duty water cooled open source welding machine' - do you understand the basic conceptual power electronics design so you can start us on the process? Furthermore, if we can write down a proposal, we could get it crowd funded. If you can help us on this, or point us to other experts interested in helping, that would be great.
 
=Answer=
 
From Jean-Francois -
 
well I'm no expert on the subject, I started playing with arduinos a few months back and I got some background from the course I got taking my ham radio exam
however I was recently laid off so I might not have much time for now to contribute, I have two welders on hand but they are MIG which is simpler, one is a full "magnetically coupled" design that uses adjustable transfomers only to control the power, there's also my friend new weller MIG, it's a compact solid state design
I always thought doing a combo MIG and TIG power supply would the best because more the circuit can be dual purpose saving on manufacturing costs of but a MIG and a separate TIG
you also want a TIG because it's more much versatile than MIG (mostly welding aluminium, special alloys like inconel and exotic metal like titanium)
also I think MIG can be improved by TIG features like pulsing (either voltage or feed rate, maybe controlled by a proportionnal switch on the MIG whip)
having a TIG power supply also allows to connect a "replacement" plasma cutter whip (both TIG and plasma cutting use a constant current power supply, as opposed to MIG's constant voltage)
 
I think the first thing to do would be to take appart a few modern TIG and MIG  of different manufacturer, figure out the circuits and each particular "good ideas" the engineers added
 
then build a low power prototype proof of concept or a plain featureless solid state MIG and TIG (separate) power supply
 
then try to re-use parts of the two circuits to design a new TIG+MIG PS
 
then scale up the power by using bigger IGBTs (if they are fast enough, if not use power MOSFET)
 
using an arduino for the brains will attact lost of attention for the rest of the maker community, especially electronics-oriented, arduino-oriented and welding-oriented communities
 
because giving the operator of the welder full control through an open source controller is something no other welder manufacturer has ever done
 
the only mechanical challenge IMHO is designing a good cheap simple electrically adjustable wire-feeder for the MIG part (hey .. what about wire-feeding TIG ?!)
 
I have not yet taken my MIG machine but I suspect that the power section is built similar to a PC power supply on a bigger scale
something like a power factor compentation block at the mains power input, then a big step-up toroidal transformer then the rest is a switch-mode power supply controlled by a microcontroller (or an ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) since weller is a big company maybe they had one made), in fact modern welder have an automatic feedrate setting and I bet it's that same controller regulation that !
 
there are cheap, 300$ to 500$ TIG and plasma cutter combo kits on ebay, they are probably the cheapest source of information on TIG power supplys (and the circuit design will reveal the cheapest way to do it)
 
the datalogging, in my opinion would be the most novel thing about it
 
maybe a 1.8" OLED on the welding whip could give feedback to the operator about the weld he just did
maybe offer advice for obvious problems or information about weld quality or energy/gas/wire consumption
 
maybe an entire welding session could be recorded both on camera and through the datalogging power supply
and then an instructor/student or an auto-didactic person could review the information and learn how to improve their techniques
 
about HF starting, I would bet it's not just high-frequency but also high-voltage, to cause the air to breakdown and arc from a larger distance between workpiece and TIG anode
 
online welding communities (well.. forums really) are
(some are neutral, some are manufacturer specific, sometimes manufacturer-hosted, I think only the neutral ones will be favorable to DIY talk (both DIY welding machine making and DIY welding itself, since forum members are making their livings off of welding they may not be favorable to competition ?))
 
http://weldingweb.com/
25,048 members , over 500 active on a monday evening, manufacturer neutral, probably DIY friendly but not sure
 
http://www.millerwelds.com/resources/communities/mboard/
manufacturer hosted forum, 13,701 members, 125 user active on a monday evening, probably not DIY friendly
 
http://www.hobartwelders.com/weldtalk/
another manufacturer hosted forum, 20,187 members, 58 active on a monday evening, probably not DIY friendly
 
http://www.mig-welding.co.uk/forum/index.php
UK-based welding enthusiast forum, DIY and pro friendly 11,627 members, 1030 active on a very late monday night (evening in Canada, so I guess around midnight in the UK)
 
http://www.aws.org/cgi-bin/mwf/forum_show.pl
possibly a trade's union forum, 17666 members, unknown actives , stance on DIY unknown
 
and there's the welding subforum on cnczone, the biggest DIY and pro friendly forum about everything fabrication-related
oh the subforum got it's own separate website, it's kinda small but growing
http://welderzone.com/forums/
16,586 members 166 active
 
cnczone itself is 160,821 members unknown actives
 
for the electronics, first I would go to both
 
the arduino forum
http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl
 
and the EEVblog's forum
http://www.eevblog.com/forum/
 
there are much bigger forums out there but these smaller ones are usually more friendly to newbies and full of knowledgeable people
 
there are quite a few DIY MIG welder design, but most I have seen yet and magnetically coupled hard to control and keep stable types that use lots of expensive copper and weight way too much, and they're not energy efficient
 
I hope this puts you on the right track
 
-shodan
[[Category:Power Electronics]]

Latest revision as of 22:46, 26 August 2011

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