My Home made MIG welder from scrap parts.

[DJDAudio]

Home built mig welder from scrap

Well a Friend of mine lincolnmetal said this is ‘the’ place to get good info so I can’t wait to look around more,

Without further adieu here is my Mig welder I built because I could not afford one.

Here is the gun a 600amp Tweco gun I got of eBay for $24



Don’t laugh at my welds lol I am very new to welding, this is my first welder. And first few times welding.

Here is the main unit,.



The Feeder is a Lincoln LN-9 Wire feeder ( or so I was told) bought it for scrap on eBay for $20
Here are the specs on it

Feeds up to 3/32" ( 2.4mm ) solid and .120" ( 3.0mm ) flux-cored wires, from 50 - 600 inches per minute ( 1.27 - 12.7m/min ) wire feed speed.

Had to make a variable speed 90VDC motor driver for it. But works great.
Also made the spool holder for 10lbs spools but have a small one on it now to test.

The bungee is my tension system for now haha.

Oh and I have in it 0.035 flux wire now.

The transformer is from an industrial UPS system it is 1’square and about 80lbs and can produce almost 500amp at 40VAC

Right now it is running at 50amp 220V and is about 180amp output DC or AC. Back of pic are the 600amp SCR rectifier bridge I got for $15 lol

Here is a pic from the side,



You can see the large variable transformer that is for my ‘heat’ or power level input adjustment. It itself is about 35lbs.

The disconnect is a 100amp 440V 3 phase contactor to kill all high voltage power to the board for safety when no welding.

Also the drive circuit and control is all 120V that runs from a separate circuit. To minimize spikes.

I plan to make this thing better as time goes on I am not sure of the duty but I was welding for a good hour straight and nothing got warm at all the transformer remained COLD so I am sure I can push it harder with larger wire.

Please I am open to any criticism so comment away anything you see that will help make it better let me know,

I plan to run solid core with gas soon.

Thanks.

[LincolnMetal]

you are a mad man!

[toolaholic]

the cia could use a guy like you ! what can you do with 2 old microwaves?

[Tbones]

Up the dosage on the meds!!!!!

[Sundown]

I didn't know we could build our own , I had to buy mine I don't think anyone will be laughing at it esp. since most wouldn't have a clue on how to make one, I know I wouldn't. Nice job

[hoffman]

Yea George, you thought you were cool building your own torch cooler

[DJDAudio]

Ha ha wow thanks for the kind words guy's but really anything you see I can improve on?
to make it better.

Thanks.

Oh BTW I have a stick end and Tig end for it so it will be soon a stick.Mig/Tig lol
Will have a large selector switch to choose between them.


The Tig is going to be trucky I need to build a arc controller and so on.

[ajpulley]

Sorry, I don't have any help for you, but I have to compliment you. I'm an electrician and have my Ameture Radio License and I'd had to have thought hard to do that.

Well, that and have a lot of spare time on my hands. It's a bird's nest, but **** clever!

[toolaholic]

moody built a welder from 2 microwaves. as far as the cia comment. my friends son went to one of the best eltronics schools in the country. at graduation the
cia was there to try to sign the most gifted students. i'm in awe of this man's
talent! now i'll take my meds

[jarto017]

You sir are talented, very impressive indeed. Be sure to post some projects you weld up with that thing.

[Zrexxer]

Originally Posted by toolaholic

moody built a welder from 2 microwaves.

I was thinking myself when I saw this, "Oh God, don't let there be any microwave parts in this or the guy's never going to live it down!"

[moody2.0]

Originally Posted by toolaholic

moody built a welder from 2 microwaves. as far as the cia comment. my friends son went to one of the best eltronics schools in the country. at graduation the
cia was there to try to sign the most gifted students. i'm in awe of this man's
talent! now i'll take my meds

i knew my name would come up lol

yea i built a stick welder and its sitting next to the mm175 out in the garage now

plans were from this site
http://www.dansworkshop.com/Amps%2C%...%20Watts.shtml

great e-book too


hay i think i see a chamber for a hotdog in there lol

[myb]

you watched mcgiever to much didnt ya
as an electrician i'm impressed. it looks like everything and that d.c. multi tap transformer will hold up to mig and tig since its lower amperage. do you have any thermal overload protection or inline fuses just for safety some where in that frankstein? did you think up the scamatic yourself or did you make one from an operational unit to go off of?

[toolaholic]

you also have reason to be proud. a very small percentage of people could have

built your welder, even with instructions

[DJDAudio]

Originally Posted by myb

you watched mcgiever to much didnt ya
as an electrician i'm impressed. it looks like everything and that d.c. multi tap transformer will hold up to mig and tig since its lower amperage. do you have any thermal overload protection or inline fuses just for safety some where in that frankstein? did you think up the scamatic yourself or did you make one from an operational unit to go off of?

The transformer was interesting I got it fro scrap from a friend, it had nothing marked and it has no model number on it, so I know nothing about it except where it came from.

I split the center tap on the secondary and paralleled the outputs. (that helped allot)

The transformer I have never been able to get even Warm let alone hot.

I have no thermal system in place because for what I use it for it will never get to hot.

Also no onboard fuses just a 50amp 220V breaker down line.

This is where you will laugh,
I just started sticking things together to make it I had no schematic or ever made one.
Just experimented with things to see what worked best. and allot of trial and error this is rev 4 now.

You may be able to answer this question,

I am only running the primary of one side of the coil IE one leg on the center tap and one leg on the outside coil. Now the 3 wires going into the transformer are labeled T1. T2. T3, so it may be a 3 phase transformer. and may be in a delta configuration so hence when on full field or T1-T3 I get a dead short and a popped breaker.

What does that mean for me .. time to build a phase converter


A lil background on me,
I have no training in any of this no electronic training or mechanical,
I just teach myself what I want to learn. and study up.
I love to tinker with stuff, and my philosophy is why buy it if you can make it yourself, for you can not truly understand how to use something unless you know how/why it works and what better way then to build it

Here are some pics of some quick stick welding I just did tonight ( Might I add stick is allot harder then mig wow)

Let me know how I did Do they look about right?

again never really done much of this.



The size of the welds I am getting about ¼” wide
That is welding 3/16” steel with good penetration.