[sdiy] Aluminium Solder

[Neil Johnson]

> One warning about buying a Welder... You will suddenly have to weld
> EVERYTHING.

I learnt to weld at an early age (misspent youth playing with steam
engines :-) and recently bought my own MIG welder (150 Amp):

http://www.sealey.co.uk/PLPagebuilder.asp?gotonode=ViewProduct&
method=mViewProduct&ProductID=2713

Second hand, at less than half list price, and never used!  The guy bought
the welder, stuck it in his garage, then had a stroke and couldn't use it
any more, so sold it.  Its worth checking out your local Loot or FreeAds
(or whatever its called in your part of the globe).

Also, its worth buying a decent-sized one so that the duty cycle doesn't
get in the way of normal work, and you still have the capability of doing
the occassional heavy stuff too.  Also...you can get spot-welding kits for
some MIG welders too.

BTW, the "duty cycle" refers to how long you can weld at a given current
setting in a 10-minute period.  E.g. for a 50% duty cycle you can weld for
5 minutes, then must wait 5 minutes for the welder to cool down.  In
practice, you end up doing weld-pause-weld-pause-weld-pause, etc.  I
learnt to MIG weld on an industrial 600-Amp welder, where duty cycle was
measured in tea breaks :-)

Fan-cooled welders have a better duty cycle for a given size than cheaper
air-cooled ones.

BTW-2, a MIG welder is really just a BIG transformer and a bridge
rectifier.  So if you're really stuck for a 20V DC power supply.... :-)

Neil

--
Neil Johnson :: Computer Laboratory :: University of Cambridge ::
http://www.njohnson.co.uk          http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~nej22
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