Learning welding is not as difficult or intimidating as one would assume. Working with metal is a great hobby and can be very useful, both as a skill for future use and to fabricate items you may need on the homestead or for your own personal hobbies as well as essential repairs to equipment.

My recommendation to learn welding cheaply and efficiently is to begin with flux core. Flux core is super easy and requires no gas or really any skill in starting/maintaining an arc like stick.

Here are the basics you'll need to get started:

1) flux core wire welder
This can be a cheap model as you're just learning and don't need huge power or a big duty cycle (which means the usage vs cooldown period) However I recommend you get one with adjustable settings as knowing how to mess with these is a vital skill in any welding method. 240v power is also a great thing to have, not 100% necessary but recommended.

2) Gloves/hood
Starting out you can get a really shifty pair of MIG gloves and a full time darkening hood. That's perfectly fine, however an auto darkening hood is pretty nice to have and worth the investment as well as a somewhat decent pair of gloves.

3) angle grinder
You can get the cheapest shittiest one you an find and it will work, however my personal recommendation is one of be big three brands in a "rat tail" style. Reasons being are better comfort, control, and lessened vibration.

4) consumables
You'll need cutting, grinding, and wire wheels for your angle grinder, some spools of the appropriate flux core wire, and electrodes.

5) welding table and clamps
Just get a cheap shitty fold up model to start with some Chinese C-clamps. If you're not fabricating complicated shit, this will work fine.

All in all, if you're a real cheap ass with this you'll be out maybe $300 but probably less if you find things on sale. Don't be afraid or intimidated. Watch some YouTube videos. Study angle grinder and welding safety. Get a general idea of how the welding process works.

I am by no means an expert, but I've slapped shit together with wire welding, stick, and TIG with a few months practice. The welds did not look amazing but they were probably better than what's on 99% of shit we import from china and held up to some major abuse.

The main takeaway here is to just not be a little bitch because you're scared and just try it out. It's fun, and very useful.

Also, wear boots, jeans, and a thick cotton shirt and a cotton bandanna on your neck. Dont try to weld in full nylon clothes like a dumb ass or in short sleeves, because you'll regret it. Don't be stupid.

More news on my LiFePO4 battery. I got a gigavac contactor for $95 that will do 400amps, 1000 amps for short times. The most my inverters can draw is 250amps @ 48v, so we aren't even near the limit of this contactor. I placed a 10ohm 100W resistor across the contacts to charge the capacitors on my inverters without a spark. It's just wired there permanently. It's enough resistance that if the BMS opens the relay it will cause the inverters to shut down and enter a standby mode. The serious upside is that without arcing in the contactor contacts the darned thing should last forever. The Gigavac contactor also has an economizer on the coil. This means that when the coil first powers up, it draws about 2amps but within less than a second, it switches to much lower power. The thing draws 11mA when it's on. That's on par with may solid state relays. The part number I used was GV241FAX for 48v coil power directly from gigavac. For 24v applications use GV241CAX. Note these should be installed so that

I was at a loss how to calculate bus bar capacity for interconnecting batteries. Here you go.

https://youtu.be/XudtqDiyG5U
Paracord idea.

Why we prep. The hedge against inflation is hard goods. Buy things now... they will only cost more later or not be available.

Another work day today for my new battery. Presently the house is running on my first prototype battery which is NOT as neat as this. First of all the bus bars that come with LiFePO4 batteries are typically 2mm thick and are not suitable for the full amp capacity of the battery. So I bought 3/4 x 1/4 x 6’ lengths of 110 copper alloy. You need a BMS and the BMS needs to have a wire attached to each cell of a battery to keep a watchful eye on them. In my first prototype, I used crimp on ring lugs and didn’t route the wires neatly at all... I just wanted to see the thing work. In this battery I have made massive bus bars and even soldered the BMS sense wires to the middle of each bus bar. No need to stack ring lugs on the battery posts.

So I drilled them on my milling machine to get a really good consistent spacing on the holes. Never mind the few that are crooked... the vice came loose on the table. :-) I also drilled a shallow dimple in the middle of each bus bar to give a place for soldering the BMS sense wires on.

I placed a terminal strip up top in the BMS space on top of my battery. Each of the 17 sense wires comes to that terminal strip. This should make it really easy in the future to swap out a BMS or add an active balancer. I also ran an extra terminal on each end for 0v and 48v so I can attach 48v things without having do disconnect the BMS.

Note the shelf that the BMS will sit on has all thread down both sides that clamp the batteries in place. Also note that I build the battery from the bottom up and attached each bus bar as I went. This is to allow each battery to jockey around as I tighten the bus bars. You see they aren’t exactly true...they have a little warp in them (they are extruded). So if I had stacked all 16 batteries and then tried to tighten the bus bars, they might not have pulled the bottom batteries enough to make excellent contact on the terminals. So after all the bus bars were snug, I then used a nut on the shelf and all thread to clamp the batteries into the case so they won’t slide around. I have a little headspace at the top of the box above that shelf for hte BMS and contactor. Also there is a front cover and a top cover so I can keep it safely covered up.

Tomorrow I’ll hook up one of the two BMS units I have for testing and see it it is better than the chargery that I’m using on the prototype. Eventually, I’ll rework the prototype with bus bars like this one and I’ll have three identical units... 45kwh of LFP batteries.