Ok these plastic spools, for holding the coil, are an improvement
over a ziploc baggie, but its still cumbersome to readjust your grip
on the wire, and then the thing kinks and its gets a little
fusterating to line things back up.
I would pay a lot(open to interpretation) for a feeding tool, like a
mechanical pencil type of doober, that is angled correctly, easy to
load and feed more wire, and works within the confines of the welding
chamber.
Oh sure, I’ll whip one of those up in the garage tonight, lol.
I would pay a lot(open to interpretation) for a feeding tool, like
a mechanical pencil type of doober, that is angled correctly, easy
to load and feed more wire, and works within the confines of the
welding chamber.
this really simple method works great for us: Take a chopstick ( or
any other small dowl)- cut it about 1"- 1 1/2 " long. Drill a hole in
one end. poke your laser wire through it and bend. wrap your wire
around your newly created mini-mandrel allowing maybe 5mm or so to
stick out for welding. mark the end so you know what’s on there- ss,
14ky, etc. we’ve found it very useful to have some.35 wire on hand as
well for fill in welds or areas that need to be built up just a bit.
The welding industry has a similar “pen” style of item for advancing
tig welding rod - it’s a much larger diameter, though. But perhaps
easily modified?
Karl Fischer in Germany sell them, http://tinyurl.com/5sgq32 is this
what you want?
That tool is likely intended for thicker were than we use in lasers,
but might work even so. It also looks a lot like the sort of wire
holding/feeding tool that the electronics folks use for doing wire
wrap circuit boards. That’s a “breadboarding”/prototype assembly
method in which circuit componants are connected with tight coiled
wire connections on the componant leads, rather than solder, making
them easier to create quickly, and change as desired. The tools sold
for it have a coil on one end with the connecting wire, and a stem
similar to the Karl fisher tool, except it’s designed to feed the
wire while the tool is placed over a componant lead and rotated,
creating the coiled connection. I’d guess it would be easy to modify
that to just feed the wire ad desired.
My main thought for these in a laser is that their size might make
them awkward in the confines of the laser’s chamber.
And does anyone know where one could buy those simple plastic spools
that commercial laser wire is often packaged upon? I make all my own
laser wire, so I’m often just working with small loose coils. That
works, but some of the stiffer wires can get turned into rats nests
if one isn’t careful, so some of those plastic spools would be
handy…
I just drew down some thin brass tube so that it was pretty tiny (yet
with thick walls) and used that. It wasn’t a totally tight fit on the
wire, more of a guide pipe. I had a little piece of wire crossways
(and below) off the back that I could spike the hub of the reel on.
(Originally, the wire I was using didn’t come on reels, so I used
those little plastic ones that microchip people use for bonder wire.)
Not a horribly helpful description of the reels, but it’s what I
have. (I have odd friends.)
My hope is to find, or make, something small enough to work easily
in the chamber, yet with some simple mechanism to advance the wire
without a lot of hooha. Preferably some sort of trigger or pressure
wheel actuated thing that would work with one hand, so I don’t have
to withdraw the tool from the chamber, just keep on zappin. The time
spent actually welding is nothing compared to the setup each time.
Half the purpose of the welder is time savings so I’d like to
maximize that.
I took 4mm brass tubes and cut them into 2.5-3 inch lengths, drilled
a small hole 3mm from one end and then another about 2/3 of the way
down. I usually order 3 feet of 30 ga. wire for the laser at a time.
I stick one end in the hole that is 2/3 of the way down the tube and
wrap it tightly working my way up to the end with the hole by the
end of the tube. When I get there I thread the wire through so about
2 inches is sticking out. When it gets down to the tube from use, I
just unwrap it a little and thread another couple of inches out. It
works great. We have a wooden block on the laser with holes drilled
to accept all of the tubes. I engraved the metal description on the
end of the tube.