Aluminum is quite the fun material to weld. When everything goes well it’s fun, when things go bad it’s frustrating to say the least lol. I have a couple tips for aluminum, hope they help: You want to keep a slightly longer arc gap than steel, aluminum will jump to the tungsten otherwise. Settings wise (unsure on what you can adjust) you want to be at 60 to 200hz (higher narrows the bead and lessens penetration) a/c balance around 70-75% EN (25-30% EP or cleaning). Make sure to prep the material super clean and wipe it with acetone to clean the oils off. Beyond that aluminum likes a lot of heat at first, medium heat in the middle of the bead, and no heat at the end. Use the foot pedal a lot to achieve that. You will get the hang of it in no time, keep up the practice 👍. Good catch on the leaky gas hose. Edit: I almost forgot, always fill in craters at the end of welds or they will crack. Often times they crack before the weld cools. Aluminum is hot short sensitive, so you want to avoid heating it super hot and letting it cool fast (aka molten weld pool to solid metal). Try to ease on/off the heat.
Didn't quite have 7 seconds post gas - from memory I had 3 or 4 seconds set. But it takes a bit of thought to remember to hold it there all the time - I've mainly used stick welding in the past so theres alot more going on that I need to be thinking of all the time.
I learned how to tig aluminum the old school way with pure tungsten. I was recently having issues trying to weld aluminum with a new machine. Apparently the new technology in todays machines doesn't allow the use of pure tungsten anymore. If you have an inverter type machine you should be using ceriated tungsten.
Saw this the other night, spewing about the dramas, keen to follow, I want to try tig sometime, oh and also try out mig with gas only done arc and gasless mig which is crap!
Yeah gas-less mig is kinda horrible. I can stick weld, but I don’t do it often enough to be any good at it, it’s one of those skill that takes me a while to get back into it. But Ali is tough as it dissipates the heat so quickly.
Tried teaching myself tig on stainless. Gave up. A thin SS stick can do a good job of tacking even somewhat thin stuff. Would be handy to get it right though.
I find stainless and steel tig welding fairly straight forward. This is a lot different as you have to wait until the molten pool forms - but I'm having issues with that point and the whole piece just overheats before it looks like the pools formed.
Aluminum is quite the fun material to weld. When everything goes well it’s fun, when things go bad it’s frustrating to say the least lol. I have a couple tips for aluminum, hope they help: You want to keep a slightly longer arc gap than steel, aluminum will jump to the tungsten otherwise. Settings wise (unsure on what you can adjust) you want to be at 60 to 200hz (higher narrows the bead and lessens penetration) a/c balance around 70-75% EN (25-30% EP or cleaning). Make sure to prep the material super clean and wipe it with acetone to clean the oils off. Beyond that aluminum likes a lot of heat at first, medium heat in the middle of the bead, and no heat at the end. Use the foot pedal a lot to achieve that. You will get the hang of it in no time, keep up the practice 👍. Good catch on the leaky gas hose.
Edit: I almost forgot, always fill in craters at the end of welds or they will crack. Often times they crack before the weld cools. Aluminum is hot short sensitive, so you want to avoid heating it super hot and letting it cool fast (aka molten weld pool to solid metal). Try to ease on/off the heat.
Thanks for the tips, greatly appreciated as it’s quite different to welding I’ve done in the past.
He'll do fine...i took the old fashion route, practice, practice, practice. You learn so much from the mistakes that you make !
definatly, best way to learn is just get in and have a crack. We have a few failures along the way, but thats fine.
Don't forget your post gas setting to cool the Tungsten down after done with weld and hold it there until its done blowing about 7 seconds.
Didn't quite have 7 seconds post gas - from memory I had 3 or 4 seconds set. But it takes a bit of thought to remember to hold it there all the time - I've mainly used stick welding in the past so theres alot more going on that I need to be thinking of all the time.
I learned how to tig aluminum the old school way with pure tungsten. I was recently having issues trying to weld aluminum with a new machine. Apparently the new technology in todays machines doesn't allow the use of pure tungsten anymore. If you have an inverter type machine you should be using ceriated tungsten.
I was using Zirconiated tungsten (white) tig tungsten
Yep im lookinh forward to this
I defiantly need to watch more TH-cam videos on the subject so I can get frustrated that it’s not working like it’s supposed to😉
Thumbs up for giving it a try
Gotta start somewhere
Reminds me of myself and my attempts to weld haha. Practice makes perfect ah
It’s a bit harder than they make it look on TH-cam😝
Saw this the other night, spewing about the dramas, keen to follow, I want to try tig sometime, oh and also try out mig with gas only done arc and gasless mig which is crap!
Yeah gas-less mig is kinda horrible. I can stick weld, but I don’t do it often enough to be any good at it, it’s one of those skill that takes me a while to get back into it. But Ali is tough as it dissipates the heat so quickly.
Tried teaching myself tig on stainless. Gave up. A thin SS stick can do a good job of tacking even somewhat thin stuff. Would be handy to get it right though.
I find stainless and steel tig welding fairly straight forward. This is a lot different as you have to wait until the molten pool forms - but I'm having issues with that point and the whole piece just overheats before it looks like the pools formed.
@Shanes_Shed more amps to get it hotter quicker?
Clean up where your planing on welding.the cleaner the material the better.
lol it's not that hard
We can't all be experts at the first attempt