Grant Erwin wrote:

Bert wrote:

I'm thinking of picking up a cheap welder to use for a little
home-brewed electrochemical machining (aka electro-etching). Has
anyone tried this? Which would be more appropriate for this
application, a CC or a CV machine?

I believe that a transformer-based CV machine is basically a transformer with a
big capacitor bank. At any rate, my wirefeed has a bunch of honkers in it. CC
stick machines I believe have transformers that are wound to maximize
inductance. But either would work fine if you aren't suddenly varying the load.
The reason stick machines are CC is that if the weldor varies the arc the
current will try to stay as much as possible the same so the weld doesn't vary
as much. For a fairly constant load, I'd imagine either would work OK. What kind
of current and voltage are you looking for?

GWE

At this point, I would guess somewhere between 10 and 50 V, and
probably 5-10A as a minimum, possibly much more depending on how much
area needs to be etched (and how patient I am). I expect some
experimentation will be involved. I may end up needing a step down
transformer to get the voltage in the right range.

Bert