Converting an AC welder for DC output

I've got a heap of these welding rods from a farm clearing sale but I found they'll very hard to start and to keep running it says they're for AC supply what I'd like to do is to modify my welder so it runs with DC here is the reason why I want to change the welder from AC to DC with an AC wave it starts at zero and then goes the full voltage then goes to zero then comes underneath goes the full voltage and then back to zero again every time that happens and goes to zero it extinguishes the arc and this is a waveform from a full bridge rectifier it's no different start at zero goes the full voltage then goes to zero to how I would intend to change that is to use an inductor or a choke and use capacitors so it will start at zero and then go to maximum voltage but the waveform will not go back to zero again therefore making the arc easier to strike and also to run I also got this voltmeter an amp meter plus contactor for 20 bucks at a garage sale so I'll be using this to test the welder but will now give the welder a test and we'll see how many amps it will draw well that's interesting it's 25 to 30 amps is going through that plug when it's welding how do the manufacturers get away with that when they put on your 15 amp plug on it actually can anyone on YouTube tell me why this happens alright this is what happens when you touch the rod on the job and you don't strike an arc it's a full short-circuit nearly 50 amps here is the view of my setup changing AC to DC there are the two output leads from the welder they go over to here this is my bridge rectifier there's one of the AC leads in and there's the other AC lead going in now what I've done is I've used some guides for my jug box and here's two large ones here they're 300 M each and these two here a 50 amp but they're 4 diodes in parallel so they should give about 200 amps now the output is here for positive it comes around here that goes off to your welding electrode and your negative comes off here and that goes over to your work the earth right give it a test run on DC doesn't seem to be much of an improvement so for the first improvement I'm going to use a smoothing choke and hopefully it will stop the voltage from dropping completely to 0 and therefore extinguishing the arc that definitely improved the stability of the arc if a smoothing choke seemed to work really well smooth out the ripples I thought why not try capacitors we've got about seven thousand microfarad on those capacitors and we'll see how they work well that was pretty useless it's very hard to start and then it ran but it's very difficult to maintain that arc I'm going to use the capacitors but as well combine them with the choke and we'll see how this one goes Wow that one turned out really well I think that might be the combination I need starts every time and continues the arc the previous test was very successful so now I'd like to measure the voltage drop when I'm actually welding it's presently 107 volts and we'll see what happens

Channel: luckygen1001

Views: 185,587

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Id: oauWE3H2tkQ

Length: 6min 14sec (374 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 30 2014