UNIVERSITY OF DAR ES SALAAM

COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING

EE 498:FINAL YEAR PROJECT REPORT I (2021/2022)

TITLE:DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF SPOT WELDING
MACHINE FROM MICROWAVE OVEN TRANSFORMER
A project report in partial fulfillment for the award of bachelor of
science in electrical engineering

Name of Student: Mbuya, Kelvin A.

Registration Number: 2018-04-01727
Project Supervisor: Mr Evarist Mwaigaga
Supervisor signature ……………………
Submission Date: 17th February 2022

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 DECLARATION
I Mbuya, Kelvin A with registration number 2018-04-01727 declare that this report and work
described in it are my own work, with some contributions from others expressly acknowledged
and/or cited.

I declare that the work in this report was carried out in accordance with the regulation of the
University of Dar es Salaam and has not presented to any other University for examination either
in Tanzania or overseas. The views and ideas present in the report are those of the author.

Student’s signature…………………………

Date………………………………………...

This report may proceed for submission for assessment for the award of BSc. In Electrical
Engineering at the University of Dar es Salaam.

Supervisor’s signature……………………………….

Date …………………………………………………

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 ABSTRACT
This project is about designing a spot welding machine from microwave oven transformer because
the existing system is expensive so I decided to think the best way to design this spot welding
machine just from a microwave oven transformer which will just be cheap when compared to the
existing ones and also to ensure the size of the machine is small compared to the existing ones

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
First of all, I would like to give sincere thanks and countless gratitude to my Almighty God for
giving me good health all days of my life and enabling me to undertake my final year project.

I would like also to express sincere appreciations to my project supervisor Mr Evarist Mwaigaga
for his advices, support, creativity ideas, and supervision throughout this project. He has been
working hand in hand with me and solving different challenges I face during undertaking of the
project,

My sincere gratitude also go to the entire community of the University of Dar es Salaam
especially in the Department of Electrical Engineering of the College of Engineering and
Technology for the support I have been receiving from them throughout my project work. This
includes teaching, non-teaching staff together with my fellow students.

Last but not least, I would like to thank my family for their support, encouragement and love
from the beginning of my studies till this moment; this has helped me to undertake my project in
good health and mental well-being. May our Almighty God bless them.

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS
DECLARATION ............................................................................................................................ ii
ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ............................................................................................................. iv
CHAPTER 1 ................................................................................................................................... 1
GENERAL INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................... 1
1.1 Background ...................................................................................................................... 1
1.2 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 1
1.3 Problem Statement ........................................................................................................... 2
1.4 Objectives ......................................................................................................................... 2
1.4.1 Main Objective.......................................................................................................... 2
1.4.2 Specific Objective ..................................................................................................... 2
1.5 Significance Of The Project ............................................................................................. 2
1.6 Methodology .................................................................................................................... 2
CHAPTER TWO ............................................................................................................................ 3
LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................................................................... 3
2.1 Literature Review .................................................................................................................. 3
2.2 Existing System ..................................................................................................................... 3
2.20 Welding current ............................................................................................................... 4
2.21 Welding time ................................................................................................................... 5
2.22 Welding force .................................................................................................................. 5
2.3 Proposed System ................................................................................................................... 5
2.3.1 Components Of The Proposed System ........................................................................... 7
2.4 Work Done So Far............................................................................................................... 14
2.5 Work To Be Done ............................................................................................................... 14
PROJECT SCHEDULE ................................................................................................................ 14
REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................. 15

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 LIST OF FIGURE

Figure 1: block diagram of a spot welding machine with inverter supply...................................... 4

Figure 2 block diagram of the proposed system : ........................................................................... 6
Figure 3 microwave oven transformer ............................................................................................ 8
Figure 4 spot welding control board ............................................................................................... 9
Figure 5 small transformer ............................................................................................................ 10
Figure 6 fuse ................................................................................................................................. 11
Figure 7 welding cable .................................................................................................................. 12
Figure 8 copper electrodes ............................................................................................................ 12
Figure 9 foot pedal switch............................................................................................................. 13

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 CHAPTER 1

GENERAL INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background

Spot welding was invented in 1885 by an American named Elihu Thomson and this discovery was
made during a lecture while he was giving the demonstration on the exciting new field of electricity
in 1884 now after the question asked by the student then Thomson created an experiment and
produce the first spot weld. This was created when Thomson fused two copper wires during an
experiment so he started working on electric resistance welding in 1885 as a result spot welding is
used in many industries today especially in car manufacture just because so after the experiment
advances were made in creating spot welding robots that can easily fuse car parts together as a
result today there are many spot welds that join sheets of different thicknesses together

1.2 Introduction

Spot welding is the resistance welding which is used primarily for welding two or more metal
sheets together by applying pressure and heat from an electric current that is applied within a short
period of time. Spot welding process is a widely used process in both the automotive and other
industries. The process utilizes a large amount of current within the range 1kA to 200kA. In RSW,
a high welding current is passed from the welding electrodes.

This spot welding works by contacting the copper alloy electrodes with the metal sheet surfaces
by applying pressure and electric current and the heat will be generated as electric current passes
through the resistive materials and this kind of welding does not involve any filler materials.
Pressure is released between two electrodes just when the coalescence temperature is reached and
the current switched off now the materials below electrodes gets pressure welded and this weld
joint is always in the form of round spot as long as electrodes has circular tips hence spot weld. In
spot welding the electrodes are usually made of copper and one of the electrode maybe be fixed
and other maybe movable also the power used is AC power with a step down transformer and the
two terminals of a secondary winding of a transformer are connected with the two electrodes and
complete the circuit. (imts, 2021)

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1.3 Problem Statement

Spot welding machines are very usefully in car manufactures also they can be used in our garages
to fuse together the metal surfaces but the problem is that in order to get a spot welding machine
it is difficult to have it in our local garages all because they are very expensive so in order for it to
be available in our garages the price should be affordable

1.4 Objectives
1.4.1 Main Objective
The main objective is to design and implement a spot welding machine from microwave oven
transformer
1.4.2 Specific Objective
The following are the major specific objectives of the project
 to design a circuit that will use ac power and a step down transformer with two copper
electrodes
 to simulate the designed circuit so as to ensure it is working
 to implement the design
1.5 Significance Of The Project
The project has the following significance
 The spot welding machine will be available to our local garages because the machine that
I am going to implement will be very cheap compared to the existing ones.
 Also the size of the machine will be portable
1.6 Methodology
The system of methods used in this project are as follow
1) Literature review
Is a piece of academic writing demonstrating knowledge and understanding of the academic
literature on the specific topics. This also includes a critical evaluation of the material. It involves
surveying of books, journals, articles. I reviewed on different books for my project.
2) Designing and simulation of the proposed system
In this project the system will be presented in form of blocked diagrams showing the power flow
and the circuit will be designed showing all the components as in the block diagram and the system
will be simulated
3) Building and testing of the prototype
A prototype will be formed so as to demonstrate the functioning of the proposed system
4) Report writing

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 CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Literature Review

Different researchers tried to mitigate this problem where by some of them got another problem
which is when they tried to weld some thin nickel strip it burns a hole through the strip also the
other problems that they encountered was the time of application of current being too long also
balancing the temperature rise because if it is too hot then things will start to vaporize. So as I am
going to design this spot welding machine from microwave oven transformer but I will use a
microcontroller which will help to balance the welding current and the welding time also the
welding switch which can control on and off so those problems that was seen with so m the
proposed system can be reduced or eliminated at all also the type of electrode that was used was
coper electrode which melts after the first test so in my project I will used copper alloys electrodes
because the alloys of copper will improve the strength of copper.

2.2 Existing System

The existing system of a spot welding machine the basic equipment that are used are the welding
power supply, a weld head and electrodes and also in some industries they use automation and
robots and the welding occur in three stages

 The electrodes are brought to the surfaces that are going to be joined and pressure is applied
to the surfaces
 Current is applied through the electrodes to the work piece to melt the material
 Then current is removed but electrodes remain where they are so as to allow the material
to cool and solidify
The weld times ranges from 10ms to 63ms depending on the thickness of the metal.
To increase the machine efficiency and power output, inverter based spot welding machines are
becoming a good choice for welding. The inverter based RSW machine usually consists of a three
phase AC supply unit, a rectifier unit which rectifies the input voltage and stores energy in the
capacitor bank. After this, there is an inverter unit consisting of switches, which are operated at a
medium frequency of 100- 1000 Hz

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The inverter circuit produces an output, which is delivered to a single phase transformer, which
steps down the voltage and steps up the current. The transformer has two secondary windings and
a full wave rectifier mounted on it. The rectified output is then delivered to the welding electrodes.
Single phase AC units are less expensive. These units have only transformer and timer as main
components and are suitable for low volume applications. There is less efficiency for such
equipment because of the substantial inductive loss on the secondary side. Single phase DC units
are more energy efficient than the single phase AC. The rectifier adds extra weight, but the
increased efficiency enables the use of a lighter transformer. The secondary rectified three phase
DC units are efficient in comparison to single phase units. This equipment has the capability of
delivering high welding currents. The inverter based secondary side rectified machines are energy
efficient and compact, saving approximately 50% of the weight as compared to an AC unit of
equivalent power rating [6].

Figure 1: block diagram of a spot welding machine with inverter supply

2.20 Welding current

Welding current is the most important parameter of spot welding because in order welding process
to take place there should be a welding current to be sent to copper alloys so as to get the heat to

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melt the metal surfaces but this current should be controlled because too much current will destroy
copper electrodes. Now there are several ways in which including single phase alternating current
which is the mostly used in production also there is a three phase direct current, the capacitor
discharge and the newly developed middle frequency inverter direct current

2.21 Welding time

Welding time is also an important aspect on spot welding since the heat generated is directly
proportional to the welding time. This means if the welding current is minimum then the welding
time should also be minimum. Now if the welding current is too low it in such a way it cannot
produce a weld the this cannot be solved by increasing a weld time so if the welding current is
high enough then the size of weld nugget increases with the increase in time.

2.22 Welding force

In spot welding the materials should be compressed with the certain force so as to enable passing
of current to the contact resistance so as heat is generated now if the welding force is high then the
contact area will also be large and it will result into higher current density and low contact
resistance. Now the other components are coating resistance, surface coating and the material
properties (SWANTEC, 2012)

2.3 Proposed System

The proposed system change because the existing system is large compared to the proposed system
so the proposed system will have a Microwave oven transformer and its size will be small when
compared to the existing one. As it is expected the microwave oven transformer to give the output
current up to 1000 A but normally a microwave oven transformer is a high voltage transformer
which usual gives output voltage up to 2000V but depending on the number of secondary turns the
microwave oven transformer can be reduced to unity number of turns so as to give maximum
output current and small output voltage. Also will be the other transformer to give small voltage
to the spot welding control board which will help the welding current and welding time to be
controlled for desirable welding of the metal sheets also the switch which will help during turn on
and off.

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The new secondary turns is made by using thick copper wires of 16mm square so as the number
of turns to be reduce to unity to give maximum output welding current so one lead will be
connected to electrode and it will be fixed also the other lead will be connected to the other
electrode and it will be movable. The following figure is figure 2 is the block diagram of the
proposed system.

Electrodes

Microwave
oven
transformer

Microcontroller

9v
transformer
Foot pedal
switch

Main supply
AC 220V
through a fuse

Figure 2 block diagram of the proposed system :

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 Advantages of the proposed system
 Its portable hence it can be carried from one place to another easily
 Cheap price when compared to the existing one

2.3.1 Components Of The Proposed System

From the block diagram above, below is the detailed review on the components used in this project;
i) Microwave oven transformer
ii) Spot welding control panel
iii) Input fuse
iv) Foot switch
v) Electrodes
vi) Welding cables
vii) Small transformer

1. Microwave oven transformer

The microwave oven transformer has three windings, one of which is a primary winding, and AC
220V mains voltage is applied to this winding has two secondary windings. One winding provides
3.1 to 3.2 volts, while the high voltage winding provides between 1800 - 2800 volts (average ~2200
volts). The low voltage output is used to light the filament in the microwave-generating vacuum
tube (called a magnetron).

The transformer that is going to be used should be a step down transformer which will give the
output current up to 1000 A so the transformer should be modified from step up transformer to a
step down transformer by altering the number of secondary turns by replacing the secondary turns
with a welding cable which should be thick so as to have small number of secondary turns.

Microwave oven transformer specifications

 Power range: 100W-10kW

 Frequency: 50Hz
 Input voltage:220V-240V
 Phase: Single

The figure 3 below shows a microwave oven transformer

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 Figure 3 microwave oven transformer (http://www.winshinecorp.com, n.d.)

2. Spot welding control panel

Spot welding works on the principle of joule heating where by at low voltage high current is passed
to the metal sheets. The operation of a spot welding machine is an open loop system such that there
is no feedback.

The proposed system that I am going to implement will used this spot welding control panel so
that the system will be in closed loop which involves the feedback and provides the total control
of the system.

This spot welding control body takes AC input voltage of 9V so it will draw its power from a small
transformer this is all because it cannot use DC input voltage whilst it could be easier to use adapter
charger to obtain DC output to the spot welding control board but this control panel has no zero
cross detection so giving DC voltage to it there will be a disturbance on control board operations
This control panel consists of time current digital display this consists of

 Time and current adjustment buttons

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  Work indicator
 Optocoupler isolation
 Triac
 Left time current display
The figure 4 shows a spot welding control board

Figure 4 spot welding control board (http://www.spotweldingpanel.com/, n.d.)

3. Small transformer
This transformer is needed in my proposed system because it will help to give the output of 9V to
the spot welding control panel. The reason of using this transformer is because spot welding control
panel needs 9V AC voltage it cannot take a DC voltage because it has no zero cross detection.

Therefore, if we give DC voltage maybe from external battery the control panel will not perform
satisfactorily but the microwave oven transformer can be used also to give 9V AC but depending
on the calculation which will give the output current of 1000 A so it is better to employ another
step down transformer which will give output of 9V AC to the control panel.

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The function of this transformer is to step down voltage from 220 V AC mains to 9V AC. The
following figure 4 shows a small transformer

Figure 5 small transformer (http://www.winshinecorp.com, n.d.)

4. Input fuse
In this project fuse is used to prevent wiring from the current overloads so as to prevent electrical
fire. It is to prevent the current overloads because when there is excess current to the system it can
cause damage of the machine but depending on the cost of fuse and the machine it is better to use
fuse so as when there is current overload then the effect will only be seen on the fuse where by the
fuse will burn but provided its cost is very small when compared to the other equipment.

There are different types of electrical fuses which are microwave oven fuse glass tube, micro fuse
glass tube fast acting, ceramic fuse fast acting all in all fuses can be grouped as follow DC fuses,
AC fuses, cartridge, high voltage fuses and others. The current rating specifies the nominal
amperage value of fuse, given by manufacturer as the level of current that the fuse can carry under
normal working condition.

When selecting fuse for a system there are some factors to be considered for a given system which
are

 Nominal operating current

 Operating voltage
 Ambient temperature
 Maximum fault current
 Length of time in which the fuse must open
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The following figure 6 shows the input fuse

Figure 6 fuse (http://.songshanfuse.com/, n.d.)

5. Welding cable
A pair of electric cables supplying power from a welding transformer to the work being done; one
lead connects the machine with the electrode holder, the other lead connects the machine to the
work.

They are of different size The choice of a thick cable will reduce the number of turns from
thousands to units and at the same time provide the required current load. Thick cable has good
insulation, which will not melt when heated, as in a thin cable. The welding cables consist of a
fine insulating coat that helps the cable withstand abrasions from rough surfaces. Also The copper
strands allow for the flexibility of the welding cables.

Copper is also an excellent conductor that ensures that the welding cable is resistant to heat, burns,
sparks, and abrasions that may arise during industrial works or welding duties. Welding cables are
used for heavy duties hence are prone to damages. This, means that care should be taken when
using the wires to ensure that they last long. Such cables should also be cleaned with grease and
oil. This helps to keep them functioning correctly. In case there are damages to the welding cable,
especially the part of the cable that is nearest to the electrode. The following figure 6 shows a
welding cable.

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 Figure 7 welding cable
6. Electrodes

These are mainly copper alloys with a small percentage of alloying element to improve hardness,
while maintaining good conductivity. The most common materials are Class 2 (e.g.
copper/chromium or copper/chromium/zirconium) and may be used for low carbon and high
strength steels in general. Higher conductivity alloys, such as copper/zirconium and dispersion
strengthened copper, show some benefits when welding coated steels as they provide less surface
heating because of their low contact resistance.

Figure 8 copper electrodes (vextrek, 2018)

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 7. Foot pedal switch

This is a switch that is operated by the foot and they are almost called foot actuated switches there
different types of foot pedal switches and they ae always used in industries. The reason that my
proposed system will use a pedal switch is because they are foot operated so they allow the user
to multitask by enabling the user to operate other things with their hands but also the foot switch
stays on the floor meaning that there is more room on the desk so these switches can be used in
different places like in sewing machines, medical bed operations and others now

When selecting the pedal switch it is important to know the following,

i. the construction the construction material can be plastics also the terminal type

ii. also knowing the maximum current and maximum AC or DC voltage also the contact
style also

iii. the configuration can be normally open or normally close

The figure 8 below shows a foot pedal switch which will be used in my project

Figure 9 foot pedal switch (vextrek, 2018)

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2.4 Work Done So Far
The following have been achieved so far in relation to the project;

 Weekly consultations to the project supervisor

 Literature review about different types of charging infrastructures and how they operate
 Identification of the block diagram of the proposed system
 Identification of the circuit components and their necessary information to be used in the
project

2.5 Work To Be Done

The following are yet to be achieved for the success of this project;

 Obtaining all design specifications of the circuit components to be used

 Detailed designing of the system’s circuit
 Simulation of the designed circuit
 Implementation and testing of the designed circuit

PROJECT SCHEDULE
S/N ACTIVITY WEEKS
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1 Title refinement 1
Title confirmation
2 with supervisor
and submission
3 Title defending
4 Literature review
5 Report writing
Progressive report
6
submission
First oral
7
presentation
Submission of
8
report
9 Final presentation

Work already been done

Work to be done
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 REFERENCES
(n.d.). Retrieved from http://.songshanfuse.com/.
(n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.globalspec.com.
(n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.winshinecorp.com.
(n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.spotweldingpanel.com/.
imts. (2021, january 09). imts-exhibition.com. Retrieved from imts.
Senkara J., Z. (2000). multi-spot welding aluminum alloy.
SWANTEC. (2012). http//www.swantec.com. Retrieved from swatec.
vextrek. (2018, july 06). Retrieved from www.vextrek.com.
Zhang H., H. S. (2002). Quality and testing in resistance welding.

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