Thursday, November 15, 2012

PAGE3: The insides of an ABI pulse arc welder



These pictures of an ABI welder were sent to me by a good friend, thank you Borowski!!!
This welder looks very primitive to me and basically uses a high voltage low current pulse to start the plasma flame and then a capacitor is discharged a couple on microseconds later to produce a very hot plasma flame. The problem with these types of high voltage starters is that when welding inside a tube or a channel where the sides or a spot on the work piece is closer than the spot that needs to be welded, the high voltage arc will jump to the closest spot and miss the actual point that needed to be welded.












 WELDER PROGRESS 11/17/2012

The start circuit works very good but I'm not happy and are trying to get it to work better.  What i see is that the capacitor discharges to around 13 to 14 volt and then the plasma flame goes out. I read up and found on a couple of sites where they say that the lowest plasma voltage is about 14.6V. So this is normal...please help me out if this is wrong.
After some head scratching i realized what the problem was. The start of the plasma arc is using up too much energy and basically discharges the capacitor too far before a plasma flame gets lit.
I am working on a secondary start circuit and will hopefully test it tomorrow 11/18/2012 and will post the results if everything works out as planned.
After a successful test I will be able to move on to design the rest of this welder.
There are still lots to do, designing the power supplies for this welder.....so far three....I'm not sure if I'm going to make it switching supplies?? and then i have to design an agitating circuit which will help to weld metals that are difficult to weld with frequency adjust and pulse width modulation. I will also have to think how I'm going to control all of this, touch screen? or lots of buttons?
My main objective here is to try and make it as easy as possible to build and keep the cost low.


MORE TO FOLLOW.....

11 comments:

  1. My best wishes of prosperity for all.
    Happy new year from Spain.
    Juan Miguel

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  2. Hello,

    How is going progress on that device? Any news?

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  3. How is going progress on that device? Any news?

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  4. Hi
    Have any news on the circuit?
    J.M,

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  5. http://www.intechopen.com/books/welding-processes/visual-analysis-of-welding-processes

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  6. Is this project still alive? I would really like to build one like it with your help

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  7. I had Visite your website which was very good..it would be great full to see that such a wild range of products you havv
    thanks by Incubators Products Suppliers

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  8. nice post,please update more about welding op..

    visit my blog too and read about ahp alphatig 200x welder machine.

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  9. Hello fritz, can you explain the arc initiation part of this abi welder. You are my last hope.
    A bunch of cd welder design are on the net, but no one give the idea for initiating the arc for using this cd welder as pulse arc welder.
    But you are the expert here,you can help us.

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  10. Hi can I purchase this welder from you ??

    ReplyDelete