project 2 from bobwills- altornator welder

Well this is a kinda ongoing project that is just kinda on the side. Its making a welder out of a old delco remmy 10si 50 amp altornator. Its going on a lawn mower so i can have a portable welder that can take it whereever the mower will go and weld. This project will have upedate as i know more about it. But so far ive mounted it on a 1/4 hp electric motor just for ease of working on it and to pretty much figure it out. Ive hooked it up and found out hey it puts out 52 volts without doing anything to it. Its only spinning at half what it should be too. One of the next things will be to take the diod trio out so i can ajust the current without varying the motor speed. Ive tried welding with it as is and it will spark some. Cant get a arc to start though. I didnt figure it would cause the motor is so small and only will spin at like 1500 max more like 1200 prolly. Havnt really decided what i want to do next. Either mount it on a bigger motor and try it or take it apart and do the internal work. Prolly will take it apart. I shouldnt have to do anything with the regulator cause it aint semming to be working but might go ahead and disable it for good just so i know it is gonna be totally unhooked but other than that not much more done on it yet. Like i said a working progress.

Attachment 3339

I'll be interested to see how this works out, I have a few old Delcos laying around and with Santa's pockets looking pretty empty this year, this might be the only way I get a TIG!

I would say its an internal work needed on the alternator. My motor spins only 1750Rpm and my pulley overdrive isn't very much. My alt might be getting 2000rpm at most.

If you want to crank out a real alternator TIG welder; use the single-V pulley off of the old Delco and mount it on a more recent Ford 3g 130 amp alternator (which will have a multi-v pulley (serpentine belt)). If you ask nicely, you may be ably to get suitable pulleys for free from your local auto parts store (I did). The Ford alternators are cheap, and ideally suited for this. Head over to car-part.com and select; 1996, Ford Taurus, alternator, and whatever state you're in. Then select any of the 130 amp alternators listed. I see a number of them listed for $25.

To get 130A output, you will need to spin it at around 6000 rpm. It has a small pulley, so a 3-4" or so on a 3400 rpm engine will be ideal. I have never measured it, but I would say that it will produce a lot more than the rated 130 amps. No disassembly of the alternator is necessary. There are two externally accessible bolts that you can put ring terminals under to power the field. Remove them one at a time, or the brush assembly might snap off. It's no big deal, you just have to then take four more bolts off to remove the regulator to get at the brush assembly to put it back on. The field only draws 3-4 amps. All of the electrical connections for the alt are external, so it is a very cut-and-paste sort of process with, like I said; no disassembly required.

You can read more... http://classicbroncos.com/homemade-welder.shtml

I'm wondering if it will work too. I'm making stick welder. That's all I have and happy with it but prolly still need to do internal work. We will see.