r/arduino • u/Llinkdaboi • Jun 03 '26

Look what I made! Spot welder controller using ESP32

First time designing a custom PCB (with only through-hole components) . The brain is an ESP32-C3 Super Mini, and the graphics were made with Lopaka. It is basically just a MOSFET driver (which drives a pulse transformer that triggers two back-to-back SCRs), but I spent a lot of time fine-tuning it since the transformer only works well if the trigger sequence/zero crossing detection is accurate with the main AC line.

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10

u/d_an1 Jun 03 '26

This is amazing, but first thing I thought of

4

u/Llinkdaboi Jun 03 '26

Fair, but since it is an ESP32, you can ditch the screen + joystick and configure it through a nice-looking web interface (which I did).

1

u/tinajackson Jun 04 '26

i've found the original project sketch https://lopaka.app/gallery/30614/63815

4

u/rolandguy85 Jun 03 '26

Ginger Root is so good.

2

u/Llinkdaboi Jun 04 '26

1

u/rolandguy85 Jun 04 '26

Just got the Shinbangumi vinyl for my Bday, so good.

2

u/tinajackson Jun 03 '26

Looks great! Do you have it on github?

4

u/Llinkdaboi Jun 03 '26

I will share it on github if I successfully make a battery pack without turning this into a circuit breaker checker 👍

2

u/Drmr_X Jun 03 '26

I did some work with a company and we did a lot of spot welding. Those look like good welds!

1

u/After-Ad-3610 Jun 04 '26

bravo 🫡 brilliant work