You know the feeling – you’ve made good progress on a weekend project, you’re really at your best and things are going well. Until you run out of that thing ™ You can’t live without it. The only store selling it is closed. When your progress hits a virtual brick wall, you will suddenly feel dizzy.
Of course, every challenge has the opportunity to bypass it, which is why [Lucas] finally built this carbon dioxide generator. “Ig” in MIG welding stands for “inert gas”, which submerges the welding pool and prevents the molten metal (m in MIG) from rapidly oxidizing and damaging the weld. Welders usually use pure CO2 or a mixture of CO2 and argon as MIG shielding gas, which is usually obtained from commercial gas suppliers on non weekends.
(Lucas) turned to primary school chemistry, using a violent reaction of baking soda and vinegar to produce a carbon dioxide generator. The first version is rough because everyone came out; Due to the use of ABS pipeline, there are still some sketch factors in the second iteration, but including safety valve should prevent the worst case. After some adjustments on how to assemble the reagent in a controlled way, [Lucas] can produce enough carbon dioxide to put down a decent bead – a very short bead, of course, but the video below shows that it is effective.
Can this be extended to practical use? Probably not. But it’s cool to see what’s possible, and there are some things you can archive for a rainy day. Maybe [Lucas] can use this method to make carbon dioxide for his self-made laser tube. But maybe not.