I wanted to tell the group about a new tool I got a few days ago and from what I can tell, these specific super capacitor based spot welders haven't been out on the market very long but I found a great use for it with Alas solid rail to add or repair power feeds and wires within switches. The idea is to use the now fairly common nickel strips that are used when making battery packs to bond instantly to the Atlas rails. This is better than trying to solder to the rail because the rail is so large and heat conductive, where this spot weld is instantaneous and almost no residual heat in the rail and thus chances of melting the plastic ties.
I'm not endorsing any specific brand, there are a bunch of names that all appear to be similar units.
I specifically got an 801A+ model that includes a built in DC voltmeter (to check cells before placing in parallel). The price was extremely reasonable IMO $160 and came with a supply nickel strips and exa copper tips.
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Again, these are really kind of neat. They use massive super capacitors inside and only a voltage of about 5V, but an insane pulse of several hundred to over 1000A, but controlled to a very specific timed pulse. This model senses when to pulse by seeing the short of the probes to the metal. It's a one shot pulse, and you have to lift the probe to sense again.
They also make different types of probe and handle sets for different purposes.
I could already think of ideas to use this for:
Sure, Atlas solid rail welds to add a little tab that is way easer to solder wire to the metal tab than the rail.
But another practical example is soldering the typical liquid smoke 27Ohm resistor to the metal frame of the smoke unit in a postwar engine. Spot weld it and way less heat, no more 10 minutes later and the metal is still hot burning yourself from soldering.
Example shot of the original intended purpose to weld to batteries so as to not heat the battery in the process like soldering would. That said, the mass production and wide adoption of technology- can bleed over to use cases in our hobby that we too don't want a lot of heat, but need to make fast solid electrical connections.
![Image]()
I'll try to get some pictures of the welding I did to Atlas track rails. One of those things I was too busy doing the project and not taking pictures, and then realized, hey that worked so well you have to tell others about it.
I'm not endorsing any specific brand, there are a bunch of names that all appear to be similar units.
I specifically got an 801A+ model that includes a built in DC voltmeter (to check cells before placing in parallel). The price was extremely reasonable IMO $160 and came with a supply nickel strips and exa copper tips.
Again, these are really kind of neat. They use massive super capacitors inside and only a voltage of about 5V, but an insane pulse of several hundred to over 1000A, but controlled to a very specific timed pulse. This model senses when to pulse by seeing the short of the probes to the metal. It's a one shot pulse, and you have to lift the probe to sense again.
They also make different types of probe and handle sets for different purposes.
I could already think of ideas to use this for:
Sure, Atlas solid rail welds to add a little tab that is way easer to solder wire to the metal tab than the rail.
But another practical example is soldering the typical liquid smoke 27Ohm resistor to the metal frame of the smoke unit in a postwar engine. Spot weld it and way less heat, no more 10 minutes later and the metal is still hot burning yourself from soldering.
Example shot of the original intended purpose to weld to batteries so as to not heat the battery in the process like soldering would. That said, the mass production and wide adoption of technology- can bleed over to use cases in our hobby that we too don't want a lot of heat, but need to make fast solid electrical connections.
I'll try to get some pictures of the welding I did to Atlas track rails. One of those things I was too busy doing the project and not taking pictures, and then realized, hey that worked so well you have to tell others about it.
