Test run with RC Surfer/ Homemade Spot Welder

I'm currently doing at least two projects at a time (and more in the queue) which I will elaborate later on in this blog.

Spot Welder

Spot welder test

The first project is a homemade spot welder which I'm building together with Knudt and Sebastian for the Hamburg Makerspace Attraktor. The device will be used for connecting rechargeable battery cells or join together thin sheets of metal. The whole thing consists of a 1 Farad/ 16V Capacitor (originally used for car hifi), a 13.8V/ 2A power supply, some Mosfets and an Arduino with a graphical display (at the moment it's a Nokia 5110 LCD display). The Arduino will do the controls, while the Mosfets will handle the power dissipation to the electrodes.
On the right there is a picture of an early test. You can see the capacitor in the background, on the breadboard there is an Arduno Nano and the Nokia LCD display. We are using scrap steel "electrodes" at the moment but will possibly change this with real tungsten welding electrodes.Oooh, and obviously no XBees involved this time.

RC Surfer

Years ago I bought a so called "RC Surfer" for cheap (you have to google this because mine is disassembled and I can provide no photo in action).

Cheap were also the contents of this RC controlled surfer. There was a motor driver with a relay, a 27 MHz radio control and a servo controlling the rudder. The power control was only "on" and "off" and the servo reaction to the input on the remote control was at least working.
There was no feedback of voltage or temperatures and no extra features like light etc.

 

At the moment I'm working on the new motor controls. I have a prototype L298 motor driver board which supplies at least 2A to the original dc brushless motor I'm still using. It consumes about 1A so I'm happy with the L298 for now. You can control the motor speed by using the PWM on the Arduino and connect it to the enable pin on the L298. You can also power the motor forward and backward what was not possible with the original motor driver.
The first test run worked quite well and the next addition will be the rudder control with a new servo. At the moment I'm using a joystick out of a scrap PS2 control - later I will command the RC Surfer with my android phone and a bluetooth connection. If that doesn't work, I will use a XBee/ RC combination with a traditional remote control.
Possible features might be telemetry which sends data like current used, voltage, temperatures, cam etc. Or what about a water canon?

to be continued...





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