Question: Welders are basically an AC to DC transformed converter. Why could one not be "inverted" to bring the battery bank back to AC voltage? Any engineers out there? Small "buzz box" welders are under $200--anyone ever tried this?
My "buzz box" has an AC output... Are you thinking of hooking a dc model up backward (power from batteries, output [hopefully] ac)? That isn't going to work without additional circuitry... If I am reading you wrong, kindly ignore or expound on your train of thought
I don't weld, but with the price of DC -> AC inverters being what they are why rig something up that may end up making the welder unusable for anything? Just use the right tool for the job and get the inverter you need. I keep 2 in my truck. A 400w for most things and a 700w that is used at our off-grid cabin.
You are talking about the difference between a rectifier and an invertor. When AC is run through a bridge rectifier, instead of a sign wave (as it went in) all the humps are now above the line in positive territory. (++++++++ instead of +-+-+-+-+-) the diodes only pass current one way though, so there is no going back the other way. To go from DC to AC is a bit more complicated. For that you need an inverter. (Which requires a different approach.) Nice thought though.
It can be done, with a large enough budget, but it is more like pushing sausage back through the grinder and expecting a pig to emerge.
Thanks for the input. Was just a thought. Glad someone knows his stuff. LOL, never did like reconstituted pig.