Gunnie7

I built a carbon arc furnace as a kid for science fair. Unfortunately it would only run for a short time before kicking the circuit breaker. I used a flower pot with holes drilled opposite sides of the pot. I used a curtain rod cut in half with a carbon rod harvested from D cell batterys in one end of each curtain rod. On the opposite end of each curtain rod was not only a wooden board (in and out arc control) but wire. One side went straight to the plug and the other electrodes wire went to s metal can lid in a wide pyrex baking dish, in the opposite side of the dish was another metal can lid connected to another wire that went to the plug as your negative. The glass dish was filled with brine and acted as a rheostat, you would move the can lids closer or farther away from each other in the brine filled dish to control the amount of current in the system. The boards on each electrode not only held them in position but made for "insulated" in and out electrode adjustment handles. Anyways all that being said the 1950's science book I found the design in said it was fairly safe.....that was in the 50's though and when I did it was in the 80's.....both far different times. I wouldn't call the design safe but to me it proved it could work under the right circumstances but as a kid I didn't know enough to fix the issues ur had so I gave up on it. Your design sounds s lot safer I'll say that. My question is though don't most welders have a duty cycle? If so how would you refrain from pushing it past that point?

Good stuff guys. I've been smithing since 1988 and I still learned from this post.