I just watched the tv show "On The Rocks" where they did emergency welding in the field from their battery. Does anyone know how to set this up? I think if you just connected cables directly to the battery you would fry the electrical system if you stuck the electrode in the weld which I'm sure would be easy to do. Looked like a great thing to be able to do if you had to, but frying your electrical system might be an even bigger problem. Anyway, if anyone knows how to set thi up please let me know. Thanks

 

Were they using the actual vehicle battery or was it a seperate batttery? I don't know much about welding, but know that if you touch the + & - together, you will melt metal, but not sure how long the battery would last and you would most likely damage the electrical system somewhere.

 

They were using the vehicle battery and adjusting the rpm's of the engine to adjust the amps the to weld with. Looked like they had a amp meter in the cable so they knew how high to rev the engine up to. Looked pretty nice, but I'm sure they had something in there to protect the system. The show comes on again at 11:30 Mountain tonight 6/16 on the Outdoors channel 606 on direct TV.

 

I thought I had this channel and I dont....bummer

 

I saw an article on it ages ago...and the memory's foggy: but that said- yes, you can weld using a battery-- if memory serves you've got to have a pretty stout one and/or a deep cycle one. But simply put--- works just like an arc welder. hook ground cable to the piece and to the bat. ground, place electrode in the positive side and the other to the positive side of the battery. It aint pretty, it aint really controllable (heat wise0 but just might work in a pinch.

There are/were some on board kits that would/will allow you to do the same with much more precision: sorry-- dont have a ready link in my list of 819854398245934573475 saved favorites

 

they had on board welders.

 

They've got a specific on-board welding system like this:

 

we use three batters hooked together to weld with works great in a pinch
www.readywelder.com

 

I've never done it that way...I have just hooked up 3 batteries in series, that works ok...

 

Do they have to be 'identical' batteries? That part I dont remember ever reading about.