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Emergency Welding
Imagine, you and several others, trapped in a parking garage surrounded by zombies. If only you could modify a vehicle, throw open the entry door, and speed to safety. But how are you going to fabricate things like a push bumper or window cages if you have no metal-working equipment? Well now with some ingenuity and scavenging, you can use jumper cables and batteries to create a quick and dirty welder for joining metal parts.
SAFETY WARNING: The currents, temperatures, UV radiation, and noxious gasses encountered during welding are dangerous. Use extreme caution and all proper personal protective equipment. Minors should have adult supervision. Unless it's the apocalypse.
Emergency Battery Welding
This should only be used in an EMERGENCY!
Okay so you’re in a convoy and a driveshaft breaks or your hunkered down and need to fabricate and don’t have a welder handy... well have no fear, if you have batteries, a set of jumper cables, and some solid wire you can weld!Required materials:
- At least 3 car batteries, preferably large ones and of similar size.
- At least one pair of decent quality jumper cables to use as the welding leads.
- Wire to connect the batteries: Either several strands of copper house wiring, or 2 more sets of jumper cables.
- Welding electrodes or sticks. These are coated with a material called flux that keeps air away from the weld as it cools. You can use coat hanger, but not as good of a weld.
A welding mask is preferred over goggles which will only protect your eyes from the ultraviolet and infrared light and sparks generated. A mask will protect the face and neck from flash burn, ultraviolet light, infrared light, sparks, and heat. Masks are the safer option.
Step one: Making a mega battery: also known as daisy chaining a battery.
Every battery has positive and negative terminals batteries are marked with a + or – sign to tell you which it is. You need to daisy chain the batteries together to make your mega battery.
Take battery 1 and connect its positive terminal to the negative terminal on battery 2. Connect the positive terminal on battery two to the negative terminal in battery 3. You have just daisy chained a battery into a mega battery. The 12 volts of a standard car battery has been increased to 36 volts of raw DC power and a whole bucket load of amps. Amps on batteries vary so I can’t tell you how many you’ll have but, since its marked on the batteries you can figure it out.
How you hook the batteries together depends on what you have on hand. The simplest would be if you had 3 sets of jumper cables lying around if you did just clip the ends on to the correct terminal, using the third pair as the welder.
If you’re not lucky enough to have surplus jumper cables, you can use plain old house wire it’s almost everywhere houses are, so just rip some out of where ever you only need 18 feet. Slice the protective casing off of the house wire. This should reveal a black a white and an unsheathed (naked :O) wire. Put the bare piece of copper wire aside – you want the insulated wires only. Cut the house wire into pieces about a foot and a half long now you should have 6 white and 6 black (or red) wires. For these wires only the colour doesn’t matter it’s a DC circuit. Put six of the wires together. You can salvage the connectors from abandoned cars (see photo below). You undo the two bolts at the bottom. Strip an inch and a half from the end of the wires casings for each automotive connecter used. Insert the wires between the two metal plates that now loose bolts were holding tight. Loosen the single bolt on the top to loosen the O part of the connecter. Attach the connector to the battery and tighten the single bolt. Do not touch positive and negative at the same time you will get shocked. Repeat the process for the second connector Once you have your connectors assembled you hook them to the batteries. If you used salvaged automotive connectors then remember to tighten the bolts back up to make the battery cables nice and snug.
Never connect a wire between the negative of battery 1 and the positive of battery 3. These are what you use to weld. The discharge of power if you connect these two terminals (while not welding) could cause fire, shock, explosion of the battery, or leaking acid.
WARNING: Batteries produce highly explosive hydrogen gas while being charged or discharged. Use caution, do not use in an enclosed area, beware of sparks, flame, or smoking.
Okay now that you’re nice and warned about exploding batteries on to the welding bit! Take your jumper cables connect the red one to the open terminal on battery 3. Connect the other red end to the piece of steel you wish to weld. Connect the first black connector of the jumper cables your welding stick …. Put it far far far far far away from the red connecters . You do not want them to touch. Remember the whole exploding battery thing - yeah it will complete the circuit if you do and BOOM your all burnt with a face melted by the acid and with little chunks of batteries in you and possibly dead. I’m just saying BE VERY VERY VERY VERY CAREFUL. Well when you have prepped your welding surface (cleaned it, gotten rid of any rust, paint, oil, mud, zombie chunks or what have you) attach the second black jumper cable connector to the terminal battery terminal 1. When you touch the welding stick to the part you want to weld the current melts the welding stick instead of making the batteries explode. The electrons have a place to go. When you are done welding disconnect the jumper cables.
If no more welding is needed dismantle the mega battery and put the batteries back in the vehicles to charge back up. This will drain the batteries so doesn’t over use it. This is for emergency use only so it’s when you have no other choice. Weld normally and ALWAYS WEAR A WELDING MASK OR WELDING GOGGLES AND ALWAYS WEAR GLOVES. You don’t want to go blind do you? This emergency welder can be dangerous always take your time and never complete an electric circuit by allowing positive and negative to touch – you will get electrocuted, you will die. This battery generates 36 volts but amps are what kills you. A typical car battery has at least 10,000 amps!!! It only takes 50mA to stop your heart and there are 10,000,000 mA in 10,000 amps so be careful!!!!! ELECTRICTY IS NOT A THING TO PLAY WITH. BE CAREFUL AND I DO NOT ACCEPT ANY RESPONCIBILITY OR LIABLITY FOR INJURY OR DEATH CAUSED BY MISUSES OF THIS INFORMATION. THIS IS FOR WHEN ZOMBIES ROAM THE EARTH ONLY NO EXCEPTIONS.
Page credit: - Shadowmancer, StrykerPez, Brandon_A_Boyer
StrykerPez |
Latest page update: made by StrykerPez
, Feb 19 2012, 12:57 AM EST
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Keyword tags:
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| Started By | Thread Subject | Replies | Last Post | ||
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| brandon_a_boyer | Emergency welding page | 9 | Feb 19 2012, 7:25 AM EST by shadowmancer | ||
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Thread started: Feb 9 2012, 12:55 AM EST
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I saw this as I was reviewing the welding portion of the survival guide. What direction was this going? Topics, ideas etc.
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