What flux core wire are you using?

Hi mickri.

Thanks - I can see that people are generous with their time and expertise here.

Have you any experience with or thoughts on the half-wave idea? I suppose I could buy the bridge rectifier, and wire it as a half-wave to see how it works, but I'm hoping that someone might have had the idea before me and will be able to tell me how/whether it worked.

I'm just playing with bits of scrap metal, an old rusty bedframe, and nails, screws, and washers. I've also tried welding nickels and quarters, and dollar store cutlery, and some of that wire that's used for highway crash barrier. I want to get an idea of what might be possible with this little machine.

My wife is busy putting together a board on Pinterest with projects for me, but most of them look like graduate level stuff. So far I've made a flower with a nail and 7 washers, and a "horse" with 3 nails, and they look like something that a toddler with a blunt crayon scribbled on the living room wall.
 
I do not know much about electronics and just followed instructions online to do the conversion to DCEN (DC electrode negative). I have no idea how you could wire a bridge rectifier to make it a half wave. The two wires from the welder's transformer go to the AC side of the rectifier and the other side has a negative terminal and a positive terminal. Be sure to use at least a 150 amp single phase rectifier. I originally used a three phase rectifier because people online said it was ok. But the three phase rectifier burned out rather quickly. When I went looking for a solution there seemed to be some dispute as to whether the amperage of the three phase rectifier got cut down to only 100 amps when used with single phase. I have not had any more problems with the single phase rectifier.
 
Speaking from actually having a welder with one out of four diodes blown, the welding performance sucks! I dont think you can avoid dc in your transformer with half wave rectification, at least if you have a single winding. The transformer will act weird with DC. I'd have to do some figuring g to think about how it would misbehave, and it's too late at night for that...

Add a resistor in series, or run an excessively long and slightly undersized ground cable.

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