First Time Tig Welding Aluminum

so this video is going to be a little bit different than the other ones I've done the other videos I always try to edit them and make them look as nice as possible this one's going to be done a little bit more on the Fly I've got a little bit of a dilemma I have this 2in wide like quarter inch thick aluminum that my dad wants this piece welded on to the end and of course when he asked me that I said no problem but I sort of failed to mention that I've never ever welded aluminum before and I'm going to see him this weekend tomorrow in fact and I think he's expecting to have this so I need to get this welded like I said never ever TIG welded aluminum before so I have no idea how the metal reacts I do have the filler rod for it I have a AC TIG welder now if that doesn't go very well with my welder I do have the spool gun that can weld mig weld aluminum so we'll see how this goes okay so I do have some scrap pieces of aluminum here that I'm going to try TIG welding on for a little practice and then I have 4043 filler metal and my TIG torch setup I've never used a Pyrex cup before I just have o one o-ring in there I think that's all I need but I don't know and about a half inch stick out so let's see how this goes all right so I've got uh my welding gloves my TIG gloves got the torch got my helmet so at the very least at least I look like a welder if all goes to hell at least I got the look so let's see what happens [Music] [Music] here okay well uh that didn't go as planned um so with the Pyrex cup you can really see a lot better um I was not getting any melt on here um I think I need to turn the amperage up okay so I turned it up to 120 which that's as high as I can go on 120 volt um this is probably not enough for quarter inch but let's just see what happens okay so this is definitely not the uh stack of Dimes that uh you know you see these guys on YouTube these professional welders the Jodie cers from welding tips and tricks make it look so easy but this is what I have so far so I'm at 120 amps which is as high as my machine will go on 120 volt because I don't have 240 volt in my sh at least not yet I was able to get it to weld um I don't know how well you can see that but you can see here doesn't look like it got into the roott of the joint there's that c shape um so that's not very strong but being the first time I've ever done aluminum I'm happy with that uh what I need to do for my dad does not require uh structure at all just needs to stick in place which I think a weld like this would be just fine so and uh but I'm going to keep on practicing and I'll keep showing the results I just realized I should talk about my setup here so I have a 332 tungsten it's 2% lanthanated and I did some research because with aluminum I heard you're always supposed to ball up the tip but I read a lot of different articles and people's opinions that they just grind it to a point which is what I'm used to when I TIG weld steel so that's just what I'm doing for this so and then I've never used a Pyrex cup before I think it's just you put one o-ring in there I don't maybe you're supposed put two but it seems like it's shielding okay and I it's a lot brighter than using a ceramic cup it's it actually surprised me at how well you can see the puddle so that's uh my setup for this and I'm going to continue practicing and I'll keep uh showing the results this is my last one that I just did and it's kind of hard to see but it looks like it's getting down into the root just a little bit better it somewhat kind of if you squint hard enough you can kind of see a stack of Dimes this one over here was just an absolute disaster um had it kind of screw up from the get-go and I uh kind of accidentally put my uh tungsten in there and got that all screwed up so it wasn't welding and then this one over here was just a mess I I'm not sure what happened uh I think I just didn't have my heat high enough and then it just my filler on just immediately balled up it was it was just gross so but this one seemed to come out halfway decent now if I can get this onto what I need to do for my dad i' I'd be happy with that so I'm going to uh work on this other side now and then I'll show you the results all right here's the results from my last one uh still having issues with getting it down into the root of the joint uh this one I did a lay wire technique and I think part of my problem too along with the inexperience is that my machine is just at 120 amps it's just as high as this can go so have a hard time um start getting the puddle going with a quarter inch aluminum and uh I'm just adding as much filler out as I can to try to you know make up for that so I don't know it it seems like it's going okay for my first time but I'm just going to work on this I I don't have too much uh scrap that I can work on anymore I'm going to do this area here I'll show you the results and I may just move on to my dad's project so the other thing I wanted to show was now before I had accidentally put my tungsten into the puddle and got it all goober up but this last time I had cleaned it and I did not put this in the puddle I kept it out of the puddle I did not touch it against my filler metal but this is how it looks after doing that little lay wire technique so I don't know if this is normal I mean it looks like it's contaminated but it's not so I don't know uh I'm really putting this video out there because I'm hoping that people with aluminum experience can reach out to me in the comments and just let me know what I'm doing wrong what I'm doing right um so if you're watching this and you have a ton of the luminum experience for welding TIG welding please uh comment let me know thanks all right so I have this cleaned up again uh sorry for the noise in the background that's my welder it's got the fans on so it's cooling itself down but that's the tip that I'm using I'm surprised at how much different aluminum is from steel I I've heard that it's very different um it it just melts different the puddle different uh when you dab the filler metal it just seems different I'm so used to doing Ste steel or stainless steel I mean I don't have a ton of experience uh with that with TIG welding but I have some and um I'm just surprised at how different the two metals are so all right back to [Music] practice all right so I decided to uh end practice and I'm just going to this is the part that I need for my dad so right here I'm going to just uh put a little tack there flip it around put a tack on the other side and then I'll uh weld the inside joint there so wish me [Music] luck so just ground that tack down I don't know I think it'll hold um a little nasty but like I said doesn't have to be structural uh attack this other side I put a few TS on this back side but then uh the inside I need to do a/ inch then about a one in space and then a half inch over here so attacking this side [Music] now so one of the troubles I'm having is uh my filler metal is balling up like this now like I said I I'm only at 120 amps because that's as high as I my machine would go on 120 volt so I'm at I'm pushing that foot pedal down all the way just trying to get the the puddle to going and I'm just barely able to get the puddle going so when I dip my filler metal the filler metal just melts back right away so I'm having a very difficult time transitioning you know getting the puddle going and then getting a good transition to filling the or putting the rod into the puddle because once I want to go put the rod in the puddle it just balls up right away and and falls back and so I don't know if I'm just not close enough to the puddle with my tungsten uh I'm not sure what's happening I I don't experience this with steel so this is a little Uncharted Territory for me so I'm just kind of trying to figure this out as I go all right so all I need to do is weld from this corner to that I don't know if you can see that black that black mark I made that's just over three a so I'm going to go just over three a on both sides uh because my dad like I said he needs the middle inch open so that's all I need to do on both sides here so let's see how that goes here I'm going to give myself the best chance I'm going to recan my tungsten and then uh get to it see what happens here we go [Music] all right so here's what that one looks like I'm a little disappointed because it melted here so I got a little bit of a gap so I'm going to try to add some metal there um it looked like it got down to the Joint a little bit I mean this definitely isn't going to go anywhere uh so I'm going to try to add a little let this cool um and then you know when something just occurred to me I should have I think I should be preheating this gu I didn't even I didn't even think about that till just now um I'm going to try preheating this other side and see if that works a little bit better I I didn't even think about that till just now so uh see what happens [Music] okay so I got some paracity in this one here hopefully that'll just grind out um it's just so hard I think to well that with 120 volts I I mean if you're very inexperienced like myself with aluminum it's very difficult at least in my opinion so I'm going to try to ground these welds out and and uh see what they look like all right so here it is after grinding on down um so what did I learn here well I learned that my welds are pretty ugly that's first thing uh second thing I learned is that aluminum is very unforgiving I mean you just make the little mistakes I had a little Dremel I was trying to ground this down you can see I made some divots in here uh I learned that um I have a lot more respect for any uh men or women that can weld aluminum and do that stack of dime look because for me it was very tough but again never having done it before you know I'm pretty happy with the results so I can't complain too much um I learned that pyck cups are awesome for TIG welding I mean you can really see a lot so uh but all in all I mean not the best I'll take it um but I got the job done and it's pretty Square I put a square on it it's pretty Square held its shape pretty well and uh it's uh staying together it's not going to go anywhere so first time aluminum welding hope you enjoyed it if you have any comments I mean you know anything that I did wrong uh please feel free to comment i' I'd really appreciate it so um hope you enjoyed it if you did please like And subscribe and please come back for the next project

Channel: GARAGESHOP MINNESOTA

Views: 1,970

Keywords:

Id: lHP6XPpVxtE

Length: 15min 15sec (915 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 30 2024