Variants of manufacturing choke for welding machine do it

Most of the masters involved in the private repair of equipment, sooner or later begin to think about how to assemble a welding machine with their own hands. Nowadays, manufacturers of equipment offer a considerable number of such devices for use in conditions of small productions. This may be a device operating on alternating or direct current, a welding semiautomatic device or a device using electrodes. However, any good brand device costs a lot of money, and its cheaper counterpart, as a rule, is unreliable and quickly begins to fail. To assemble a welding machine, first of all, you need to pick up or manufacture the necessary parts, this also applies to a device such as a choke.

When creating a welding machine with your own hands, you need to pay special attention to the chokes.

The advantages that the choke gives to the welding machine

The welding choke is a regulator of the current used for welding. His immediate task is to compensate for the lacking resistance. It can be connected to the secondary winding of the transformer. This allows you to shift the phase between the passing current and its voltage, which facilitates the ignition of the electric arc at the beginning of the process. It burns at the same time much more evenly, and this allows to achieve a sufficiently high quality of the weld. Without a choke, the current strength will always be maximum, which can create problems during the welding process.

Scheme of welding semiautomatic device.

The choke can be included in the design as a welding machine, which uses electrodes in the welding process, and as part of a semi-automatic device. The welding semi-automatic having it has much less splattering of the metal during operation, the welding process itself is much softer than in its absence, while the weld is boiled to a greater depth. So the advantages of using such a detail are beyond doubt, and it can be installed not only on a home-made welding machine, but also on a similar factory-made apparatus. This is especially true of low-cost models, prone to malfunctions. This will greatly facilitate the work on it and improve the quality of welding.

Options for using scrap materials

To make a welding choke yourself, first of all you need to find the right material. To do this, it is quite suitable for many electrical devices that have spent their life and discarded as unnecessary. Since it is simply a core with a wire wound around it, the choice here is quite wide. It may well be suitable for this purpose transformer, once part of the design of such a device as a tube TV. The entire winding will have to be removed from it, and the freed core must be used to wind a new wire, the length and section of which must be calculated in advance.

To create the throttle used already used electrical devices.

It is also possible, if the opportunity presented itself, to use the throttles that stood on the blown-out lamps of street lamps. At the same time, the old windings will have to be removed, since they have become unusable, but leave the cardboard linings, which created a gap between the main part of the core and the closing one. When winding new wires, they will need to be put in their original place. In general, it should be noted that for winding the choke you can use any magnetically conductive core having a cross section of 10 to 15 cm. In this case, a nonmagnetic gap must be made between its parts, for which an insulating gasket with a thickness of 0.5 to 1 mm must be inserted.

Manufacturing technology and installation

Aluminum or copper wire is involved in making the choke.

Aluminum or copper wire is used to wind the choke. In the first case, its cross section should be 35-40 mm; in the second, 25 mm will suffice. It is possible to use a tire, in particular, copper, 4 by 6 mm, or thicker aluminum, as a replacement for the wire. In this case, the wire is wound in an amount of from 25 to 40 turns, and the tire will have to be wound in 3 layers. If the aforementioned part from the lamp of a street lamp acts as a core, then winding is performed only on one of the lateral sides along the entire length until the window is completely filled. In this case, the winding direction cannot be changed. Each layer must be insulated from the previous one by laying cotton fabric, fiberglass cloth or special insulating cardboard, which is still desirable to impregnate with bakelite varnish.

If the device does not provide for smooth, but stepwise adjustment, then no air gap is made in the magnetically conducting core of the inductor, and when winding through an equal number of turns, it is necessary to make bends. Contacts on them should be placed at the same time strong enough, since they will bear a large load. In general, it should be recognized that the establishment of a throttle has a positive effect on the operation of any welding apparatus, whether it be a semi-automatic welding machine or a primitive home-made product. For an apparatus operating on alternating current, it will be optimally used with a current rectifier, which will allow it to apply almost the entire range of electrodes, and it will work much more smoothly.

You can also put a choke on the device with a step-down transformer. It is connected to the secondary circuit of the welding transformer. This repeats the design of a branded Japanese semi-automatic, costing a lot of money. In this case, the throttle must be very accurately calculated by the formula, which is published in the special literature, and this advantage will give considerable. Such a device will have a transformer with good dispersion, and its characteristics will be clear.

It should immediately warn that before you assemble a welding machine assembled on your own, the choke must be properly configured. This can be done in two main ways: by adding or reeling off the number of turns of the wire, or by changing the size of the air gap in the core.

After the Throttle is successfully configured, the home-made device will be able to work no worse than the expensive branded semi-automatic.

It will meet the exact requirements that the owner needs.