Like muffler fluid, the battery powered welder has gone from a joke to reality recently.

Not a plasma cutter, but same power class, and certainly able to heat a padlock shank to melting. https://www.dewalt.com/product/0447800880/esab-renegade-volt...

Damn, didn't know that existed but it makes sense with how much power lithium ion can deliver.

I'll have to keep my eye out for the Home Depot buy a battery and get a free tool deal on those.

Heh, I'll have to watch for that sale.

4x12AH batteries, that's gonna be over $1200.

I doubt you could charge them faster than the welder can run them down, so you might want three sets and two gang chargers if you want production anything like a plug-in machine.

Matt's Off Road Recovery uses one to stick broken Humvee steering rods back together about once every four or five episodes.

But people have been welding with batteries for ages. The most primitive welder is a car battery and a couple of wire leads. Tons of videos of it on YouTube.

Yeah, fair enough. Two car batteries in series is even better. Not easy on the batteries, but it will get the jeep out of the bush.

You can also make your own stick electrodes from coathanger wire tightly wrapped in paper.

I couldn't tell you how many pairs of sunglasses you should parallel to protect yourself...

This rig, on the other hand, is something you could pack into just about any plant and fix something with without raising any eyebrows. If you have $5,000 to spend, that is. Super handy for small jobs in hard to access places.

Hearing about it did ruin the "cordless welder" jokes my coworkers used to share.

Reminds me how the Sinclair C5 failed because the inventor couldn't source a 15 mile long power lead.

Shouldn't the sunglasses be in series?

Batteries in series, typical stick welding voltage is ~27v. You might be able to light up on one battery, but you will quickly learn why it's called "stick" welding.

I wouldn't arc weld with any number of pairs of sunglasses, that was firmly tongue-in-cheek; but yes you are right, stacked glasses would be series.

Also, if you try this, before pulling the battery from the non-broken jeep, drive it to the top of a hill so you can bump start it later when the battery is too dead to turn the engine over.

You're right, I've mixed them up with portable oxy-acetylene torch, unless they're just backing up to the lock in a pick-up.

You can pick up a wholly self-contained plasma cutter in Lidl or Hofer in their "cool tools week" for about £100 these days.

It wouldn't be beyond the wit of man to hook that up to a biggish inverter and 24V worth of deep cycle batteries on a small trolley, maybe a wheelie suitcase.

Always be red-teaming.

Depends on how portable.

A while back I was making a point about the border wall farce--and found everything I would need to do "portable" plasma cutting on said wall on Home Depot's website. Not pick it up type portable, but put it in a wagon type portable. (Generator, not batteries.)

I don't know how anybody can look at those rusty metal pylons and not think their natural habitat is at home on top of a 40 year old white Toyota pickup with a suspension that long ago achieved sainthood. Like if I were looking to attract illegal immigrants, those pylons would be exactly what I would use. But then again isn't this just the standard fascist pattern? Propose a comically self-defeating solution to some problem, and build a tribal identity around aggressively denying the obvious. It's like the social justice preaching to the choir writ large.

A plasma cutter needs a pretty decent supply of compressed air

A 5lb bottle of Nitrogen would do the trick.