Need welding pointers, Please!

[alan]

How many welders do we have out there? I just finished building my home shop and have been trying to get back up to speed with my new TIG welder. I am mostly a self taught welder and machinist. I have done lots of MIG welding fabricating trailers and various other black metal projects.  All of my TIG experience was at the University Art Department and at the foundry I cast my art work in Santa Fe, NM.
So now I am retired and I have 2 new Miller welders to play with.  The MIG is no problem, but the TIG has so many new functions, it is driving me crazy................

Back when I started TIG welding I was using a Linde 460 water cooled. It had AC & DC what a beast.  I think we used pure tungsten with a green band. Now I have a Miller Synrowave 200, The d**n thing has all kinds of different settings, AC, DC Square Wave and a whole hand full of other settings that I don't know what they do! I have been practicing on very thin Aluminum and am currently using .040 orange tungsten, with pure Argon gas. I am getting pretty good at running beads on .015 thick Aluminum. I guess I have always heard if you can weld beer cans together, you can weld anything!

I would really appreciate any suggestions!

Thanks Alan

[demographic]

Right for a start, I don't know much at all about welding aluminium but have worked as a welder and weld inspector in the past, from what I know for aluminium you want square wave AC, you might well have a post purge setting on the welder, thats for the gas.

It keeps pumping a bit of gas out whilst the weld pool is molten to keep the oxygen and nitrogen away from the hopefully good weld.

You often have a slope in and slope out which controls how quickly the arc gets going and how quickly it stops.

I am posotive that theres people on here that will know far and away more than me about aluminium so with a bit of luck they will put me right if I got anything wrong.

I am was qualified (qualifications only last for five years and mine have long since run out) to inspect them, radiograph them, dye penetrant test them but am still a complete newbee when it comes to actually welding aluminium.

[BDI]

For welding aluminum you want to use the pure tungsten with the green band. I think what you are using now is the 2% thoriated tungsten but it usually has a red band that is what you want to use for welding steel. I have lots of books on tig welding but the best book I have is from miller It's called the tig handbook you can order it from millers web site. Millers web site is very informative they have a tig calculator that if you enter the metal type, thickness and type of weld It will tell you how to set up your welder. They even have a slide calculator that does the same thing that only costs six bucks you should buy at the same time you you buy the tig hand book. It is important that you use tungsten and filler rod that is very close to the same size as as the materiel that you are welding. Once your setup is right you can concentrate on your skills. The welding together of a beer can is one thing I have heard of but yet to see, to even have a hope of doing it I think you would have to remove the anodizing because it is an oxidation on the surface of the metal and it does not like to be welded. I have welded two beer cans together by their bases but that is a far cry from cuting one in half and welding it back. good choice in welders by the way and congratulations on the new toy 

[alan]

BDI,
 I use to thinks Pure tungsten also, However I got this info off the miller tips on there website! "When welding aluminum, use AC current and a ceriated  (orange identifying band) or 1.5% lanthanated  (gold identifying band) tungsten." Which is the one I am using.  Back at the foundry, we used a TIG to burn off sprues, vents and to re assemble multi part sculpture in silicon bronze. I am not to sure if I just lost my touch or if I just don't have the setup correct.

One of my buddies, who took a welding course at the local college, said they did cut a beer can in 2 pieces and weld it back together as part of their final exam!

Anyway I still don't have the proper size ceramic lens for the size tungsten. I have some more stuff on order from an on line supply co. It seems that when you go way down to thin stuff everything matters. I was using 1/16 fill rod with the .040 tungsten and I couldn't get it to melt, so I am now using some .023 MIG wire as fill and it works good.

Thanks for your help!

Alan

[BDI]

sounds like you don't need any help to me. If your reading and learning from miller you are probably better off with out other peoples misinformation screwing you up. As for the tungsten Im just going off of what millers tig calculator says. I'm by no means an expert tig welder for me It's just a hobby and Im not quite sure what the benefits and or disadvantages of the different tungsten blends are. more then anything I was just trying to point you towards millers web site and millers books because I have wasted a bunch of money buying other peoples crap welding books and getting peoples crap advice. Im sure that beer cans can be welded together I just have not seen it and from my own attempts at it I know the anodizing makes a lot of white smoke and screws up the weld. Any time you weld on something like an exhaust can that has been clear anodized you are going to get weird smoke and black soot in and around your welds that will not wipe off. I learned this from my budy Charlie who builds race cars he has been tig welding so long he has carpal tunnel syndrome from it. I just thought this is something you might run in to so I thought I would tell you about it so you are not racking your head when it happens.

[alan]

Thanks again! I guess i shouldn't be surprised after 30 years when I first started TIG welding that there now are 5 different tungstens to chose from instead of just 2!  Anyway if I get beer can welded back together I will have to post some pic's of it! He He!

Your are absolutely correct there is no way to weld anything that is anodized  without cleaning it!

Anyone else have more to ad I would welcome their comments............

Alan

[BDI]

I sure would like to see a picture of a beer can that has been cut in half and welded back together I have spent hours on the computer looking for one.

[BDI]

Hey Alan any luck with the beer can yet

[alan]

BDI, sorry for the delayed response to your question!

Yes, I did manage to weld a beer back together, however I won't post a pic of it because it is no prize! I am a self taught welder and Machinist. And most of my TIG welding in the past was on bronze castings with Everdure bronze. I had done some aluminum welding back at the foundry in the 70's, but that was with a Lindy 460 water cool tig.

The things I did find out while attempting this are as follows; 1st, clean, and with beer can that is a major problem, because on the outside you have anodizing and on the inside you have a polycot. If you do manage to get it clean enough to weld, you are left with about .004 to .005  of an inch in thickness to try and weld. 2nd, the electrode, fill rod, nozzle must be as small as you can get, Like an .020 & .040 electrode, and these days you do not want to use pure tungsten, because you do not want a ball end, you need Orange or Gold Band tungsten which have a higher melting point so your flame will stay focused. 3rd, the flow rat on the argon is also critical, because you need just enough to keep the area shielded, but not some much it will blow away the puddle. 4th, it is hard to find thin enough fill rod, so I ran some .023 MIG wire through a rollers to make it flat and very thin.  I won't get into the particular setup on the welder, because it would very according to brand. Finally, from my prospective it is hard to weld beer cans together, however it can be done if everything is just perfect. I did find the welding aluminum foil was much easier to run a bead on than beer cans and I got pretty good at that!

I have a Miller Syncrowave 200 and I should have spent a thousand dollars more and got the Miller Dynasty 200 DX.

Anyway it was a fun exercise, much like when I decide to cut my first set of gears on the mill!

If anyone is a master welder, I would love your input!

Alan

[BDI]

Hey Alan I wanted to show you the tray I made for the top of my welder. I knew it was inevitable that things would get set on the welder so I made a tray. I took the cover off the welder and removed the hoisting hook and found a safe place inside the welder to store it. The tray is spaced off the welder with nylon collers from the hardware store and the tray is bolted down with counter sunk flat top phillips screws in the factory bolt holes. Then I finished it off with some black vinyl.

[Jeeks]

That tray is nice.  Not just the tray itself, but the function.

I've been getting by with a Lincoln 175 Plus with the aluminum kit.  I'm running straight argon for steel and alu, but it's still a PITA changing the spools/rollers over all the time.  A dedicated alu welder would be ideal, just not in the budget right now.

A friend of mine repairs outboard motor skegs.  He said the main thing with alu is cleaning and don't get it too hot. Use SS brushes, etc.  If you can lay on a roll of nickels with a TIG you're doing something.

[BDI]

It does work great but I want to make a new one out of steel and paint it miller blue so that it looks like the welder came with it.