HOW TO – Car battery-powered MIG welder

Becky Stern is a Content Creator at Autodesk/Instructables, and part time faculty at New York’s School of Visual Arts Products of Design grad program. Making and sharing are her two biggest passions, and she's created hundreds of free online DIY tutorials and videos, mostly about technology and its intersection with crafts. Find her @bekathwia on YouTube/Twitter/Instagram.

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October 22nd, 2008 6

Normally MIG welding requires a big fancy machine, sometimes also with a large tank of pressurized gas. Instructables user TimAnderson managed to hack together a hand-held wirefeed MIG welding gun and a couple car batteries for a more portable effect. He writes:

Here’s my new wire-feed (MIG) welder.
All of it.
They sell these things as accessories for commercial MIG units, but they can also work great on 24 volts from two car batteries.
I have it loaded with .030″ flux-core welding wire.
It cost me less than $100 on ebay.
The “Ready Welder” is a similar commercial product.
WARNING: The tip is electrically on all the time!

6 thoughts on “HOW TO – Car battery-powered MIG welder”

SuperJdynamite says:

October 22nd, 2008 at 8:50 pm

Strictly speaking this is not a MIG welder. MIG stands for “metal inert gas”. Without the shielding gas component this is really more of an arc welder.
tenax8.myopenid.com says:

October 23rd, 2008 at 12:08 am

Well, it’s FCAW (flux core arc welding) to be *really* picky…
Anonymous says:

October 23rd, 2008 at 5:29 am

All you need is a BAR (“Big-A**ed Relay”), or a second switch (such as a battery master switch you can get at any farm or auto parts store ~ $7) to safety the power supply so you don’t get bad surprises when you set the gun down on a grounded surface.