Is the 30€ Spot Welder any good? Review and Teardown
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 7 сен 2024
- This video shows you the inside and usage of the 30€ LCD Battery Spot Welder that you can sometimes get for as low as 26€ from Aliexpress:
s.click.aliexp...
Follow me on Twitter: / atc1441
Why did you not test the one job that it will ACTUALLY be used for? Spot welding nickel strips to Li-Ion cells.
Great review, thanks Aaron! Sad for the missing 5.1kohm resistors (for the USB C to USB C cable)
Press the black and white button to rotate the screen ❤😂
The Aliexpress link says that the screen can be flipped. Presumably in software. Nice video, I shall probably buy one
I bought one of those a few weeks back. Seems to work well.
Press both buttons at the same time, to rotate the display.
Why spend 1 minute to read the manual when you can dump and RE the firmware in 2 Hours 😂
@@atc1441 I really enjoyed your disassembling video very much, yesterday...
I have gone through IDA myself for something i needed to change in a commercial thing, but it was quite nice to see how others than me go at a problem to finally find the right bits and bytes. Awesome!
Welding seems to be working well enough. I just always wonder how long the lithium battery survive those high current draws? More expensive kits work with a big amount of capacitors, and I guess it has a reason?
I was thinking the same. Does anyone know?
I doubt it is a big problem, since the pulse is just so short. I would love if it had a 18650 cell though, so you could replace it with a beefy one that can output 35A without problems.
From my experience with two similar types of welders, the internal Lipo cell lasts long enough to make a video, and maybe spot weld one battery. Both of mine were no good a month later. Battery lost its capacity. The units weren't that powerful anyway, not worth replacing the cells.
Looks like you could wire the LCD in and rotate it to face the way you want. But then the controls might be reversed. Definitely have a fire pan near by if you use that thing on lithium batteries.
My preferred way of changing the rotation is to reverse engineer the firmware and change it that way ^^
Do you have any idea if there is any battery protection circuits between the battery and the powerbank/MCU electronics? And how much current draw (or self-discharge) this device has when turned off? I had a similar spot welder from Ali (without display or powerbank feature, though) that seemed to lack any battery protection and did not turn off properly, so after it had been lying on a shelf for six months or so, the batteries were completely discharged and damaged...
Likely there won't be any protection between the battery and spot welder contacts and FETs, but the rest of the circuit could be connected through proper undervoltage (and also overcurrent - for charging) protections (but with these kinds of devices, you never know of course...).
Reading the description on Ali of your welder now, it does claim 2.5year theoretical standby time and only 20μA standby current, and it talks about "Over-current short-circuit protection" (and even "Overcurrent protection: 1.12KA" suggesting that the welding output is also current limited and/or protected) and "low current protection" (maybe that is undervoltage protection)? Any evidence of these protections on the PCB?
I'd like to see you reverse engineer the firmware.
Great video by the way.
Lets see if its gonna be reverse engineered :)
@@atc1441 :)
Hey great video! Would you hack the Spotify car thing? That small piece of hardware could be a lot more useful if it had open software
Do you think the firmware could be extended to accept an external trigger? I have the same unit, and would love to be able to have a footpedal. Maybe those contacts at the bottom of the main pcb could be used.
What's the maximum thickness plate that it can weld? Can it do 0.2mm?
Can you touch the pins, isn't it provide high current and get hot?
No problem in touching it
The problem would only be high voltage but not high current
Does it play Doom?
There's another review at ruclips.net/video/XXuvlVmbcb0/видео.html but not nearly as coherent. That seems to be an older model - the display is less colourful and it has some maker's / seller's name information on the panel.
yeah this confirms that I'm not going to buy one
Good that the video has a value still in the end then :)