I vaguely recall back in the 90s, there was a rig commercially available, and was catered more to the off-road truck enthusiasts for repairs on the trail. You had to already have a dual battery setup, and then from there the kit you could get included a high output alternator and the welding machine and all the wiring to put it together, Then you needed to have the room under the hood to bolt it in place. Either my memory is on point, or I imagined it in a dream.
GUilty as charged. 48v, 220AH deep cycle, over 10kwhr storage capacity. Wrench was glowing in about a second, managed to violently and instantly pry it off with screwdriver without welding the screwdriver, too. In another episode I was wearing a metal watchband. The details are not pretty. That definitely made the top ten list of stupid shit I have done in my life. Direct shorts across large batteries can be quite spectacular.
I seem to remember hearing about this years ago and using negative electrode positive ground being the way to go. I often wanted to try, but I'm so glad to see someone else demonstrate it for me on YT instead.
I found 3 batteries in series works really nice if you need to weld heavier steel. With 3 batteries, you can add in additional jumper cables to limit the current if needed. I used setup that to weld a steering box back on my truck on the Rubicon trail. I have dual batteries set up in my 4x4 and have some custom jumper cables I can use to connect them in series if needed. But, I also now have a Premier Power Welder and as you mention, it's so much better than batteries with the high frequency DC plus you can adjust the voltage/current up and down with the engine RPM. Used that PPW a few times on the trail and it's great.
Thanks for the insight and thoughts. I bet the premier power works great. The closest thing to the premier power I have ran was an old engine drive generator welder that basically used a car alternator to output power. It varied rpm of the little engine for 3 amperage settings lol.
This is something my dad learned in an adult education welding class, more than 50 years ago. I used a carbon-arc torch with a couple of batteries to braze something.
😂You've given me an idea! 🤣I've made my own jumper cables from welding wires and fitted them with DIN connectors so they can be configured in different ways (additional clamps and different lengths 😛) and I have a welding handle on the same DIN. I'm just missing a second battery 😝 because the hood rides in the car very often and I really need to throw in some electrodes!!! 🤩🤩🤩
Hi Greg and all welders out in space watching your video's, yet another one that shows something different. Just great to see Keep it up and lets see more. Maybe oxy/acetylene, cutting and welding gases used etc and also plasma cutters, we have three and boy do they save money on gas one is fitted with an internal compressor for our field work. The best 2 are Fastarc 500Dp you need compressed air tanks for them outside but they do all our heavy work brilliantly. Oh bye the way give this a try with the batteries use a smaller rod and stitch the weld, push it hard for around 3/8 of an inch then leave a space and come back over to the space you left a bit like spot welding, I found out that good penetration can be achieved this way, two average car batteries giving 12 volts should do around 15 to 20 rods big truck batteries with a higher amp hr a few more. lets see more work videos and you at the 4x4. Cheers and good luck Phil..
I will be getting into torch work in December more than likely. I would do it sooner but it has averaged 95 degrees when I have filmed in the shop for the past 3 months, and the last thing I want to do is play with a torch lol. I am also not a expert with a torch so I need to do some reading/practice to make sure I can give solid advice 😀👍
Back in the 90's I remember seeing lots of people on the trail with some sort of pocket sized stick welder thing. It was about the size of a softball and hooked to the battery. I remember thinking about getting one but never did. I can't even remember what it was called now and I'm not in that scene so much any more. Basically all you need is something to boost the voltage and shut off when the rod gets stuck.
I have seen alternator welder setups and spool gun battery welders, but nothing like you described. It wouldn’t take much of a boost in voltage to get it to work better. I might have to make something like that lol.
Hi Greg, interesting. Have you checked the running voltage when lighting up a rod? I have a feeling that it may be a few volts lower than expected. Possibly 3 batteries in series might do the trick. At least check and measure the voltage with 2 batteries while welding? Almost forgot, if you were using actual jumper cable somewhere in your circuit, ensure your jumper cable is a decent wire gauge size, hopefully similar to welding cables to also reduce voltage drop. Booster cables and their clamps are usually poor quality but good enough to jump start cars. Cheers, Joe
My finding was that 36v, nominal, in my case coming from six GC-2 6v golf cart batteries in series, was not too bad. Bad, just not AS bad so not "too" bad. Didn't try 30v or 42v due to time constraints and unfriendly welding environment. 48v sucked and 24v sucked worse if you want to cut to the chase. Bear in mind that a 6v battery fully charged is more than 6v, same with 12v battery, and a heavy discharge naturally pulls the output voltage down due to internal resistance. So welding with 36v is not actually welding with 36v, and actual measured voltage would vary depending on arc length and other factors. Anyway, the thing you REALLY want to regulate but really can't effectively regulate very well, is current.
@@growleym504 The arc staring characteristic for all these rods in this test looked similar to a typical 6010 on a cheap welding supply, not quite enough voltage to run the rod. I was figuring that with just the 2 batteries at approx 24V open circuit, that they would naturally have a typical voltage drop while under load, possibly just under the required voltage to sustain an arc while welding. At least it looked that way to me. Would love to know what the batteries voltage dropped to while welding. In theory with the correct close circuit battery voltage, batteries should weld just fine. But as you mentioned current control is another problem.
Great ideas. I will retest with 3 batteries and see what happens. With no current regulation in place I have a feeling if 36v would establish an arc the rod would more or less just start smoking due to the current. Much like striking the same rod on a welder set for 300 amps would lol.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg Hi Greg, see my comment about using a carbon pile rheostat in series. to control current with the three batteries. You might be able to cannibalise an old battery tester, they have carbon pile rheostat. Not the best duty cycle but could work for a few rods at least.
Enjoyed your comment about stick wouldn't work, but maybe you could TIG with 12 volts. Seems to me then you just need 1) an urgent need to weld something in the middle of nowhere; 2) a charged car battery; 3) a tig torch; 4) a tank of argon, 4) a welding hood. If you have all that, maybe you'll have gloves and other PPE handy, for some reason?
I will give tig a shot since I have a scratch start rig that would easily work. I have a feeling it will hold an arc and then just more or less the amperage will ramp up. Much like setting a machine for max amperage and striking an arc would do the same. I have no idea how much amperage the battery can discharge at, possibly 300a or more which would be really bad lol.
I kind of want to do a a-team themed episode where I talk about the feasibility of some of the stuff they show 😅. I grew up watching that show and I bet if I went back and watched it I would have some laughs 😅
Hey Greg, I know this doesn’t count as roadside emergency repair since it requires a gas cylinder, but can you please consider doing scratch start TIG with car batteries? I think it would make interesting content.
I definitely will do just that. I will make a prediction and say it will just have a “runaway” aka once the arc is established the batteries would discharge at the limit of what they can handle. Just like if I had a 300amp machine set for 300 amps and struck an arc lol. With no current limiting in place once an arc is established I don’t believe the tungsten would hold up. Testing will figure this out lol.
An interesting video with some surprising results. May I suggest you try 18v cordless batteries next time with with thinner diameter rods and then when out on a trail somehwere and you just welded up an gearbox mount you can at least start your engine and get home because the main battery isn't flat! 🤣
That’s an interesting idea lol. I never thought about two 18v batteries. I bet it would work, I need to do some research to see if the batteries have a discharge limit or if they will just melt down lol.
I actually had pretty decent results using 6011 1/8" with the electrode on negative terminal. I made a short jumper for the batteries using battery terminals and welding cable, and connected the hot/negative to my jumper cables with anderson connectors. I used the jumper cable clamp for ground but made a dedicated stinger lead. Like you, I was shoving the rod in MUCH faster than normal. It was almost impossible to stick it. The rod did get glowing hot before long though, so you can't weld for too long.
I used to have a self contained battery powered wire welder. It of course used flux core wire, and had two big SLA batteries in it. You had a wall wart charger for it. It used the small spools that hung off the side. Can’t remember who made it now. Unfortunately lost it when my old shop burned….
That actually sounds sort of cool but I would want flooded cell deep cycle batteries for it, in spite of the weight and the risk of spilling electrolyte.
That sounds cool. The closest thing I can think of is the Hobart trek 180, which has been long out of production. It functioned on two lead acid 12 volt batteries and was in a suit case. Wish someone would come out with a setup like that again.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg For some reason I’m thinking this was by Campbell Housfeld, but I can’t say for sure. It had two big batteries like used in an emergency light. The wire feeder and spool mounted on the side.
Well… you don’t see that every day. Very interesting to see it put to the test. Man, the flux sure burnt off those rods fast. So… 2 batteries with maybe 750 CCA each. Do you think that was in the neighborhood of 1500 amps? I’m not sure if that’s how that works. Very cool how you guys put yourselves in harms way for the sake of education. Thanks
The max current would be limited by the batteries, and I would have to guess something around 5-600 amps since they were in series. Due to the resistance in the cells and the wires I bet 3-400a would be peak under welding. To smoke that rod like it did I bet it would be well over 250a, I have never seen a rod light up that fast lol.
I have 12v back up system that actually just started as a experimental setup to see if my ideas of using 12v cheap available stuff in a solar style system could work. I started with lighting and stuff and yep close to half my house and shop are 12v LED but I haven had a chance for phase two I was going to wire up small inverters for things like AC celling fans and so on the idea was to power the inverter on and off instead of using one big inverter. I did find a 3000 watt 12v dc to 120v ac I cot it at a store we have called Canadian tire for like $100 so i figured there was no way it would actually do 3000w in my testing I ended up plugging in my little 120v Lincoln wire feed welder and it worked prefect. I think if you had a couple good batteries with a good alternator in your rig adding a inverter like my 3000 watt would open up the possibility's its 25 to30 amps 120 will run a lot of stuff
That could work depending on circumstances. I bought the fronius battery powered welder and it will weld no issue off any power and would fast charge with an inverter like that too. I am going to likely build a new off road truck over winter and I will be integrating a inverter for that purpose 😀
You’re likely correct. The only issue is access to 4 batteries in an emergency situation will be tough. I will be doing a part two where I try some more things to get it to work better. I am unsure if the being able to hold higher voltage is a good thing. Due to there being no amperage regulation, once an arc is established there will be nothing stopping the rods from being pushed way high in amperage. It might be a good thing it can’t stay lit for long lol.
Just to keep google algorithm happy . There are lot of good comments , but I think you have both a multi meter and a clamp amp meter , and it would be interesting see the readings. Did you pink the batteries from the junk yard, or the next door cars? 🙂
The grey battery was from my truck I used to get to the tin shed, luckily it still started it afterwards lol. I will do a part two and meter the setup to see what’s going on. I will also find a 3rd battery to see if that would work. I have a feeling the 3rd battery will just cause an arc to stay lit and the rod to glow red hot lol.
run smaller rods. H-F had some 1/16" rods, & I had no idea rods existed that small...so I got them. One night I ran out of mig wire after cutting the exhaut off my car & then I discovered 1/16" rods are great for exhaust tube! I bet that will work with 12v.
I will be trying those little guys in a part two. They must use less voltage than even a 3/32 rod. However I am unsure as to how they will like to e unregulated amperage lol.
They weld nice, but they're small & short. You will need about the same weight of rods that you would with bigger rods, These tiny rods will disappear faster than M&Ms at a Weight Watchers meeting.
Your videos make me think about welds. I'm a beginner. But I wonder about not using any fill metal, just melting two pieces together. Would that be strong. What would a cut and etch on that look like. I mean, blacksmiths do welds kind of that way. My hunch is that blacksmiths welds are stronger. Maybe you could do a video on this.
I definitely will do a video on that. You can do fusion welds without filler with tig, and they can be very strong. However it’s completely dependent on the thickness of material and the joint. On an outside corner joint on thin material it can be done with little loss in strength. On a fillet weld a significant strength loss will happen because the weld will basically be undercut into the metal. The reason for the strength loss due to the fact your basically thinning out the material in the area being welded. The filler also has deoxidizers and other allowing elements to help make the weld cleaner, this is gone without filler. I will definitely cover it in depth in the near future 😀👍
It would be interesting to see how would 1.6-2-2.5mm E6013 rods perform in this test. Getting a higher battery voltage would be nice, in order to get on par with DC welders this would require connecting 5+ 12V batteries. Maybe a more complex battery circuit would be necessary to achieve this, a mixed parallel and serial connection where the lower the voltage to common ground the more batteries are in parallel. This would give both high idle voltage and good capacity at arc working voltage. However, in this kind of circuit, batteries closer to high side must have low resistance to avoid degrading performance of the whole assembly.
I will be giving the mini rods a shot and attempting a 3rd battery. I have a feeling the 3rd battery will allow the arc to stay lit but it will also probably smoke the rod lol.
I have done this once, hehehe, used cheap long chinese jumper cables, no stinger ,.two big flooded acid batteries, cable insulation started to melt after few rods. even recharged the batteries once. used 6013 1/8 & 3/32 rods on exhaust pipe thickness type pipe , 1/8 worked better actually, cooked a 3/32 once or twice, oh i remember I put in a high wattage low ohm resistor and also for some inductance coiled (into a cylinder) & taped the long jumper cable on one side , i.e. for a little control. I remember coming back and telling my welding machine I love you. It was 15 years ago. To add this is still not the worst way to weld i have seen, the worst/scarier is welding direct from the mains through a bucket of salt water. I draw a line at that. no never especially with 240v main.
Thanks for sharing your story doing it. The salt water with main power wires is definitely a proposition I won’t be trying lol. Thinking of that pins the needle on “sketchy” lol.
I wonder if it would help any if you cleaned the material as best you can for better conductivity or even heat it up a bit beforehand with the thicker material.
A cleaner surface would help a bit, but a lot of things are flat out wrong to get decent stick welds. I will be doing a part two with smaller rods, more batteries, and some other things to see if I can have better success lol.
Hey Greg, just an addition note to my previous comment. I read that older submarines, especially during WW2 used batteries to make weld repairs all the time when they could not use generator. I wonder what they did differently? Cheers Joe
My guess is they had some method to regulate current. I have a lot of thoughts on how to achieve this simply. I have a feeling if I add a 3rd battery to reach 30+ volts the rod will just smoke due to the unregulated amperage. Using something that functions as a resistor inline would likely solve this issue. The problem is doing it simply and without a ton of heat generation lol.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg Hey Greg, I wonder if they used a carbon pile rheostat? Using that and with the 3rd battery may keep the rod lite nicely with current control. I know it's a mute point especially with all the neat tech available like your Fronius AccuPocket, but it would be so cool to have this run off straight batteries. Cheers, Joe
Both batteries were fully charged, adding a charger wouldn’t likely do much. Chargers output more voltage but typically with not a lot of amperage, and the voltage would drop still. Because the amperage is unregulated, if more voltage allowed the arc to stay lit the amperage would more or less be regulated by the resistance of the wire and the welding rod. The wire connecting the batteries and for the cables is far lower resistance than the rod. So effectively the rod would heat up significantly just like it did when the rod got stuck.
The jumper cable was only used to link the batteries, and it was 4ga. If it was limiting current it would have smoked just like that rod lol. All the current exists, it’s just that you more or less have to dead short the rod because it doesn’t have enough voltage to maintain an arc.
I have a device marketed by a company called Rawlplug here in the UK in the mid 70's that is designed to weld from a car battery. it is a solenoid that holds the welding rod and as soon as the rod makes contact it breaks contact again so that the rod vibrates up and down constantly. It's a piece of shit to weld with and I got it back then as I was trying to weld car body with a welder generator, ended up ditching that and getting a carbon arc brazing torch which was not much better, I still have both devices more as novelties than anything else.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg I guess that when you are starting out one makes a mistakes, there were lots of such junk advertised back then and of course without social media like you tube it was hard to discern what was what. The real crazy thing is I recently saw the Rawlplug thing advertised again but with another name, the patent has run out and the Chinese are selling them.
More than likely it was below that, thus poor ability to maintain an arc. I bet as others have suggested running 4 batteries would solve the voltage sag issue, but that’s a whole lot of work for some trail repairs lol.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg -- It's clear from watching you both try to weld with those two batteries that is not a real solution and would have been even more useless if you only jumper cables were used instead of actual welding leads. I wonder if anyone make a small portable two-cycle stick welder.
The thinner rod may work, but the current is so high I have a feeling the flux would burn off fast. Probably only get 1inch of rod used before it’s smoked lol.
I might try that. The problem is by not having an arc established it limits the current the battery can discharge. I have a feeling by adding another battery it will maintain an arc and then smoke the rod because there is no way to regulate current.
@makingmistakeswithgreg 1. Series and Parallel Batteries Configuration: If you're working with car batteries, how you wire them affects voltage and current: Series wiring increases voltage** while keeping the current capacity the same. Parallel wiring increases current** while keeping the voltage the same. To get a higher voltage and lower current, you might consider using more batteries in series. For example: 4 batteries in series would give you around 48 volts, which is closer to what many stick welders run (typically 40-60V open-circuit voltage). 2. Use a Current Limiter: Instead of just a resistor, you can use a more advanced current-limiting device: Current-regulating diodes or constant current regulators can help maintain a specific amperage while keeping voltage relatively stable. You can also consider pulse width modulation (PWM) to control the current electronically without as much loss of power as a resistor would cause. 3. Transformer with a Rectifier: A step-up transformer paired with a rectifier could step up the voltage from your battery setup. This will help increase voltage while regulating the current. However, using this approach would be more involved and might require careful design to ensure the output voltage and current are appropriate for stick welding. 4. Add an Inductor (Choke): An inductor in series with the welding leads can help smooth out the current, reducing spikes and potentially helping to limit current without dropping as much voltage as a resistor would. Inductors store energy and can help with arc stability as well. 5. Use a Welding Controller or Inverter: You can use an inverter-based welding setup designed to work with battery power. These devices can adjust both the voltage and amperage dynamically, providing the stable arc needed for welding. Some off-grid welders are designed specifically to run off car batteries and solar power. Summary of Steps: 1. Add more batteries in series to increase voltage. 2. Use a current limiter to control the amperage and avoid resistor-based voltage drops. 3. Optionally, consider a step-up transformer with rectifier for more stable output or look into a welding inverter designed for battery use. This way, you'll have the right balance of voltage and current for effective welding with your 6010 rods without overloading the electrode.
Hey, can you do a test video of brazing with copper wire (in a pinch) vs proper bronze brazing rod? I got good looking brazing with coper wire and I wonder how strong is it in comparison to proper rod. Thanks!
That’s an interesting thought. I will do that with tig to see what happens. I would imagine it would be weaker than silicon bronze, which is actually pretty strong.
I haven’t seen the whole video but if this is successful, could it be done with the batteries in the truck? I have a 3500 Cummins with dual batteries and I’ve always wondered if I could do something like this while the batteries are still hooked up
So the issue with a dual battery setup is you need to wire them in series. Depending on how the batteries are wired jumping them together may cause a voltage spike that could short out components. The safest way would be to disconnect them.
Thanks. Speaking of car batteries, do we have to disconnect the car battery if we have a welding job somewhere on the car using external welding machine?
Many people will disconnect the battery, that isn’t a guarantee of protection against shorting important components. The smartest thing to do is ground as close as possible to what you’re welding and disconnect computer modules that are close to the area.
So, in conjunction with the ability or inability to be able to do this based on what rod might work and apparently you can, Is there any logistical insight how much this may or may not actually 'damage' a battery per se? Does it not affect it at all? Can this be done with only Lead Acid or would the BMS on modern LiFePO4 batteries shut down the circuit due to the over voltage range dispersion restrictions? My 'guess' would be that this likely couldn't be done by 'most' LiFePO4 batteries due to their inherent BMS'. But, this might make an additional interesting subject matter to discuss??
Great question. Based on my knowledge of different batteries, there are a bunch of potential pitfalls with stick welding on batteries. Having more voltage would help produce a consistent arc, but with unregulated amperage I think the usability will be limited. I will be doing a part two where I use 3 batteries to hit higher voltage. I have a feeling it will cause an amperage “runaway”. Aka once the arc is established the amperage will rise until the rod gets red hot and becomes a resistor of sorts (and limiting amperage). I don’t believe this would damage the batteries since it would happen so fast the actual time under load will be limited. Different battery chemistry would likely be a benefit because you could achieve better voltages with fewer batteries, and many non lead acid batteries can hand much higher discharge rates without failure. Definitely a ton of things to think of.
I run everything in the tin shed (other than the lights) on a predator 9500. It has enough power to run most things but it will not max out welders about 200amps. If you need more than 200a of output you need around a 10k running watt generator.
Well normal car setups are 12v, not 24v. Because you need to link two batteries together the voltage would fry your electronics. While running the car wouldn’t produce enough voltage with a single battery to weld with :(.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg Yeah and a lot of modern cars/trucks have a 100 amp master fuse that feeds the fuse box. The other issue is there's also a fuse that protects the alternator, and even if it's an older one without a fuse; then that poor alternator is going to see each initial arc strike as a dead short, and that will probably either fry the alternator or kill the voltage regulator. And that would make the trip out of the bush become challenging if it's dark out and now you have a dead alternator. It's not fun to try and hike to the nearest O'Reilly's auto parts store, and now you have the fun of trying to replace an alternator off road.
Off camera I tried swapping to a clamp and putting it on the piece, there wasn’t a change. The table top is grounded, and works pretty good. The issue is most stick welders have 40-80volts open circuit and can produce 27volts once an arc is lit. Under a load the batteries are producing probably 22-23v if that. Most need 24 to keep an arc established, anything below that and they won’t keep it lit. By cramming the rod in it more or less shorts out and arc blows fast enough to produce a “weld”. I might try 3 batteries to see what happens with more voltage lol.
Why haven’t you tried using more batteries? This was a lot of effort, but sticking to just 2 batteries. You need at least 5 or 6 batteries to get your open circuit voltage around 60 or higher (better) and at that point the 6011 will weld normally, the 7018 would like the open circuit voltage more, around 80, and then it will weld beautifully. Disappointed guys; an A for effort, but an F for not expanding to the use of more car batteries.
I think you might be a bit confused as to the feasibility of what you’re talking about lol. In an emergency situation 5 or 6 batteries will likely not be available, let alone all the cable to make that work. The other issue is the lack of amperage control, without some way to regulate the amperage having anywhere near 60v would make starting an arc easier but it would likely cook the rod immediately. The fact that the rods were more or less spot welding is actually a good thing, I think they would have melted just like running a 3/32 rod at 180a would melt it fast.
ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ZxBF7WC0TQk.htmlfeature=shared a guy named "electroboom" (electrical engineer?) did this. He found that the fluid can boil (boom) and it should only done for i forget like 10 seconds then a you have to wait quite a while. It can be done longer im sure but its not safe
