How to Change Battery in Welding Helmet – [Miller and Hobart]
Auto-darkening helmets are great safety assistant that help welders to avoid the common welding safety hazards such as heat, UV rays, splatter, and sparks.
Unfortunately, a majority of the welding helmets are battery-powered, ad this means that you have to replace the batteries ever so often.
From the word go, replacing welding batteries might seem challenging, but in reality, it's an easy and manageable task provided you have the knowledge and practice to do it.
And in the section below, we shall highlight some of the painless steps you can take to replace the batteries on your helmet.
But do all helmets contain batteries?
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Do All Helmets Contain Batteries?
There’re a whole array of helmets that use fixed internal batteries that are irreplaceable.
Often, these welding helmets usually come with solar panels that help in charging the battery before use.
However, there're newer photovoltaic cells that are increasingly becoming popular. However, a common misconception we see many welders making is that these solar-powered helmets do not use batteries.
This is not true because most of these batteries have helmets that act as supplemental sources of energy.
Now let's look at how to replace the helmet batteries, but first things first, you need to ensure that your helmet needs new batteries.
How to Look Whether your Helmet Needs New Battery
Replacing batteries is not only time-intensive but, to some extent, expensive.
So, you must ensure that your batteries need to be changed.
Here are some of the steps you can use to determine whether your battery requires replacement:
Look for an Alert
Some of the helmets usually come equipped with a signal that alerts you when your battery is drained.
The low-battery alert is common in the modern and high-end welding helmets, though. However, it’s increasingly becoming a standard in the welding helmet domain.
To see whether your helmet has this feature, you simply need to examine your helmet and check the user manual to see this feature is present in your helmet.
Weld with Different Intensities
Normally, helmets automatically darken or lighten, depending on the intensity of the light.
So, you can test the power of the batteries by subjecting your welder to varying strength in varying environments.
If your helmet is not adjusting to the light level correctly, it means that the batteries are weak.
Similarly, if you see a lot of flashes, or the light intensity is too bright, it implies that the auto-darkening function is not functioning well, and you'll have to change the batteries.
Look at the Sun
The outdoor sun test is not the most effective way as this method can strain your eyes.
Be sure to wear your helmet, then look at the sun. While at it, trying waving your hands back and forth across the helmet-the point here is to intermittently block the sunlight and see whether the helmet is responding.
If our batteries require replacement, the helmet won’t react fast as normally as it would. In fact, if the batteries are totally drained, the helmet might not even act all, and this implies that you need changing the batteries.
Steps of Replacing the Batteries on your Helmet
In the section below, we shall look at the step by step procedure of replacing the batteries on your helmet.
- Read more: How Do I Use a Plasma Cutter?
Tools you need
Here are some of the tools that you’re likely to need during this task;
Step 1: Locate the Batteries
First, you need to locate where the batter is located.
In most cases, identifying this location is easy, and it's usually situated at the top of the helmet, usually near a solar panel.
Now, you might get tempted to think that the purpose of the solar cell is to recharge the helmet when letting out in the sun. In reality, this is not the case, and this section also contains photosensors that play the role of detecting UV rays, and darken the lens.
Once you locate the battery section, place the helmet on your table for some support. Then using a Dremel tool, dissect this region to cut a small square shape, about the size of a postage stamp.
Once you do, this way, don’t throw the cut part away as it might come in handy later.
Step 2: Remove the Batteries
Using a thin screwdriver or precision nippers, gently pry the tabs of the battery in an upward motion to break them loose.
We insist that you're extremely gentle during this process, and you need to be careful not to exert too much pressure on them a this might result in the breaking of the point where the batteries connect to the PCB.
Step 3: Adding New Batteries
Once you’ve removed the batteries, the next step is soldering and connecting the battery holder with the leads.
The red lead should be connected to the positive polarity, while the black lead should be connected to the negative polarity.
Test
Once everything is in place, the final step is to put your welding helmet to the test.
Though there're many ways of testing the effectiveness of the battery, one way to test is through the Sun Test, or rather the steps we discussed earlier.
