I believe this capacitor discharge welder was first designed and sold by Hughes Corp but was subsequently sold under other brand names, Palomar and Micro-join. They pop up on ebay every so often. Although heavy and bulky, they're nicely built and the electronics are simple enough that any required repairs should be relatively easy. The double-pulse output works very well, cleaning up the workpiece with the first hit, then full weld with the second. Both pulses have programmable energy and I find that 20 then 40J works well for battery tabs. In essence, they're well built work horses that make perfect battery tab welds every time.
The capacitor bank is 4 x 1500uF 250VDC which dumps into a very nice custom output transformer. The output winding is 5 turns of 10mm x 5mm solid busbar
There are also various primary taps, selected by the large front panel 'pulse width' knob.
The HCD125 (Hughes Cap Discharge 125 Joules) has bigger brothers with higher output capability, the HCD300 and 1000. I think the only differences are larger capacitor bank and output transformers. The electronics look to be very similar if not identical, so expect slower cap bank recharge time on larger models.
I have attached a partial schematic which I reverse engineered from a HCD125, might help someone else save one of these units. If you do, tell us about it here!
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