I see a lot of people only using a couple of pulses to keep the heat down when using these spot welders on batteries. A simple teardown in a future video would also be handy to see the design and quality of the basic components inside, this would give us an idea if its repairable in the future and if its really worth purchasing.
Hey Richard, these spot welder are to build battery banks for electronics projects. I have used one to build a replacement battery backup for laptops. Usually one of the 18650 batteries is bad. Find the defective cell and replace it with a new one or from one harvested from doner one from bad banks.
Bizarre ! Julian just reviewed this as well, it just seems our good friends overseas are sending out review items like there's no tomorrow ! Great device at 30 quid or something daft like that....cheers.
Hi Richard. It would be great if you could weld a small Nickel solder tag to say an aluminium enclosure or chassis. If it works it sure will beat having to screw on solder tags or terminal strips to chassis. Sometimes need to do this when restoring radios etc
I made my own but the method is extremely dangerous if done by people who don't know what they're doing (not referring to you, Richard, but it isn't something I would want a child to copy, for example, so I won't describe it here) but this is a great tool to have if you do anything with batteries - it can pay for itself in no time and learning how to use it will not take more than an afternoon. If I didn't already have a way to do this, I would seriously consider buying this one. Great review.
The power bank function could be useful to drive a usb soldering iron. That's the sort of function you might need for field repairs where you need to add tabs to a battery then solder wires to the tabs.
@andrew_koala2974 I have 2 soldering irons which work very successfully off 5V. Both are rated at 8W. One has an internal battery but obviously the run time is limited so it could be recharged from the power bank. But I did say for field work for example where there's a need to solder a wire to a battery tab. If I wanted to do more extensive work I would use a proper soldering station.
It would be interesting to know the resistance of the welds compared to the base metal. If only conducting at a few points, I guess that limits the current it can carry.
Two issues with this device: 1) The included USB-A to USB-C cable does not allow this device to draw more than 0,34A from a charger, making it useless. I don't know why they even include it. You need to use your own quality cable to get the device to draw 1,9A from the charger. 2) In my case the device didn't stop charging at all. The battery voltage reached 4,33V at which point I manually disconnected it from the charger. Who knows what would have happened if I relied on it to stop by itself and left the room!
I must admit. I'm sold on this Brand and Model. I've got a cheap $25 model and it welds but not like this thing. I thought about modding the one I have to hook to a car battery but at this price, Why not get a legitimate portable spot welder that doubles as a battery bank?
Nice video 🖖 Is ther a website with tips for the different types of Nickel sheets, what types of settings on this spot welder would be good working. 🤔🤗
I wonder how many welds the unit is expected to do ? There must be some reason to add a counter. I also noticed some physical movement of the leads as it pulsed. I'd be intrigued to know what's inside it. Having seen a few dubious cheap versions of these welders its nice to see a decent looking one from a known brand. Thanks for the review.
it has a stand on the back so you can weld in front of the device .I use 2 pulses but that is my prefferece There is battery drain when not in use (small) so if not used for a few months it pays to charge
@andrew_koala2974 I do think the power bank implementation while a great idea was a huge missed opportunity here. With PD it would have been really useful IMHO. Anyway I always discuss my reviews with FNIRSI after publishing, I have full editorial control over the actual content of the review. and I will mention your and others comments to them.
Yeah I saw the stand and that is a useful feature. For me it was a lot easier to review the welder when it was sitting flat on the bench as that is the way my cameras are set up. Also you note I mentioned you can flip the image on the screen and use the welder with the rods attached at the bottom which I also think would be useful
I bought a different style unit about a year ago for making battery packs using 18650 cells. AliExpress and other vendors sell battery kits which includes the battery case, some spacers and a battery cell management circuit board. My version has two probes that are fixed to the metal case so you can make the welds one handed. That frees up a hand to hold other pieces in place.
The nickel strips 10mm width x 0.103mm thick in the box are nickel plated steel not pure nickel strips. Abd from a other video I know if you press to hard the tips down the resistance getting lower and the welds are less good welder, because the welding amperage drops of the lower resistance, its better not tu ouch to hard with the probes down. 🤔 🤗
Personally I would not weld Li Ion or LiPo batteries unless I have 2 buckets of sand each half full. If you are spot welding batteries my understanding is that you do NOT want to generate a large amount of heat. as it may cause a battery fire. Hence the 2 buckets of sand should a fire break out. Toss the battery into one bucket and dump the remaining bucket of sand on top of the battery. LiPo batteries are notorious for fires if they get overcharged or too hot. I noticed that at th-cam.com/video/WE0-Nu-B3rE/w-d-xo.html in the video the display was saying SHORT / UVLO which according to Fnirsi means that the unit is not fully charged.
Well this is one reason why we have the live streams every other Sunday 😁 Next on is April 7th 5pm-7pm London Time. We can also try a tear down as another viewer commented. Live streams are on www.youtube.com/@theelectronicschannel and are a collaboration between Carlos (Retro Upgrade) Detlef (Det Builds Stuff) and myself. See you there
I see a lot of people only using a couple of pulses to keep the heat down when using these spot welders on batteries. A simple teardown in a future video would also be handy to see the design and quality of the basic components inside, this would give us an idea if its repairable in the future and if its really worth purchasing.
These kind of things works really nice for building/repairing power packs, spotwelding the cells. Didn’t know FNIRSI had one too. Looks quite nice.
This something i needed from time to time, I just purchased one for around 42 Euro, these normally go up in price after you review them 🙂
Hey Richard, these spot welder are to build battery banks for electronics projects. I have used one to build a replacement battery backup for laptops. Usually one of the 18650 batteries is bad. Find the defective cell and replace it with a new one or from one harvested from doner one from bad banks.
Bizarre ! Julian just reviewed this as well, it just seems our good friends overseas are sending out review items like there's no tomorrow ! Great device at 30 quid or something daft like that....cheers.
Hi Richard. It would be great if you could weld a small Nickel solder tag to say an aluminium enclosure or chassis. If it works it sure will beat having to screw on solder tags or terminal strips to chassis. Sometimes need to do this when restoring radios etc
I made my own but the method is extremely dangerous if done by people who don't know what they're doing (not referring to you, Richard, but it isn't something I would want a child to copy, for example, so I won't describe it here) but this is a great tool to have if you do anything with batteries - it can pay for itself in no time and learning how to use it will not take more than an afternoon. If I didn't already have a way to do this, I would seriously consider buying this one. Great review.
The power bank function could be useful to drive a usb soldering iron. That's the sort of function you might need for field repairs where you need to add tabs to a battery then solder wires to the tabs.
@andrew_koala2974 I have 2 soldering irons which work very successfully off 5V. Both are rated at 8W. One has an internal battery but obviously the run time is limited so it could be recharged from the power bank.
But I did say for field work for example where there's a need to solder a wire to a battery tab. If I wanted to do more extensive work I would use a proper soldering station.
what's the specs of those nickel strip you use to test it? Pure? or steel plated? 0.1, 0.15 or 0.2mm thickness?
It would be interesting to know the resistance of the welds compared to the base metal. If only conducting at a few points, I guess that limits the current it can carry.
Helpful review, and advantage that this is portable. Thank you.
Two issues with this device:
1) The included USB-A to USB-C cable does not allow this device to draw more than 0,34A from a charger, making it useless. I don't know why they even include it. You need to use your own quality cable to get the device to draw 1,9A from the charger.
2) In my case the device didn't stop charging at all. The battery voltage reached 4,33V at which point I manually disconnected it from the charger. Who knows what would have happened if I relied on it to stop by itself and left the room!
I must admit. I'm sold on this Brand and Model. I've got a cheap $25 model and it welds but not like this thing. I thought about modding the one I have to hook to a car battery but at this price, Why not get a legitimate portable spot welder that doubles as a battery bank?
Nice video 🖖
Is ther a website with tips for the different types of Nickel sheets, what types of settings on this spot welder would be good working. 🤔🤗
I wonder how many welds the unit is expected to do ? There must be some reason to add a counter.
I also noticed some physical movement of the leads as it pulsed. I'd be intrigued to know what's inside it.
Having seen a few dubious cheap versions of these welders its nice to see a decent looking one from a known brand.
Thanks for the review.
it has a stand on the back so you can weld in front of the device .I use 2 pulses but that is my prefferece
There is battery drain when not in use (small) so if not used for a few months it pays to charge
@andrew_koala2974 I do think the power bank implementation while a great idea was a huge missed opportunity here. With PD it would have been really useful IMHO. Anyway I always discuss my reviews with FNIRSI after publishing, I have full editorial control over the actual content of the review. and I will mention your and others comments to them.
Yeah I saw the stand and that is a useful feature. For me it was a lot easier to review the welder when it was sitting flat on the bench as that is the way my cameras are set up. Also you note I mentioned you can flip the image on the screen and use the welder with the rods attached at the bottom which I also think would be useful
I bought a different style unit about a year ago for making battery packs using 18650 cells. AliExpress and other vendors sell battery kits which includes the battery case, some spacers and a battery cell management circuit board.
My version has two probes that are fixed to the metal case so you can make the welds one handed. That frees up a hand to hold other pieces in place.
Richard how thick was the nickel and was it nickel plate or pure nickel ?
The nickel was supplied with the welder and I don't know the technical details of it but I will ask FNIRSI for you
@@LearnElectronicsRepair Would be appreciated Richard thank you
Hi Richard 🤗🤗
Nice tool 👍👍👍👍, but ... did you have the enhanced version with desktop wood branding feature ??.???.🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
The nickel strips 10mm width x 0.103mm thick in the box are nickel plated steel not pure nickel strips.
Abd from a other video I know if you press to hard the tips down the resistance getting lower and the welds are less good welder, because the welding amperage drops of the lower resistance, its better not tu ouch to hard with the probes down. 🤔 🤗
Personally I would not weld Li Ion or LiPo batteries unless I have 2 buckets of sand each half full. If you are spot welding batteries my understanding is that you do NOT want to generate a large amount of heat. as it may cause a battery fire. Hence the 2 buckets of sand should a fire break out. Toss the battery into one bucket and dump the remaining bucket of sand on top of the battery. LiPo batteries are notorious for fires if they get overcharged or too hot.
I noticed that at th-cam.com/video/WE0-Nu-B3rE/w-d-xo.html in the video the display was saying SHORT / UVLO which according to Fnirsi means that the unit is not fully charged.
Wow Interesting..
Is this an sponsored video?
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The charging cable in the box ist crab, I got better charing power with fadt charging cables 1.65A and with the delivered cable only 0.3A
Any test isn't very good unless you weld different thicknesses of pure nickel strip's for your info.
Well this is one reason why we have the live streams every other Sunday 😁 Next on is April 7th 5pm-7pm London Time. We can also try a tear down as another viewer commented. Live streams are on www.youtube.com/@theelectronicschannel and are a collaboration between Carlos (Retro Upgrade) Detlef (Det Builds Stuff) and myself. See you there
i l❤
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