get the BEST ARC CONTROL tig welding aluminum (here's how) how to tig weld aluminum

okay in order to get some aluminum TIG welding passes like these ones here this is going to require some accuracy and a very stable Arc and after teaching people how to do stuff like this over the years I've got some very important tips that are going to help you to get some greatl looking results with stuff like this as well let's go okay so when we are TIG welding aluminum we need the perfect balance between the shape of our weld good edges where the filler material Blends and transitions into the base material and especially with aluminum TIG welding we want that finish when we get all the variables balanced the important ones we're going to talk about we get the dimes that shine this is what we want and when I've been able to get my setup particularly dialed for some really good accuracy I'm able to weld some really fine or thin material and get some really nice stuff getting some smaller welds as well so let's go over the first tip that's going to help you out here this is going to be very important with aluminum this is going to be focusing on your starts the start of each pass is going to be absolutely crucial to everything that's going to follow it's very important to get everything perfect at the beginning of every pass that you do I always talk about it as being the most important part of every weld but if you try and do a weld where the start isn't really established properly or everything hasn't quite developed before you start moving or perhaps at the stting you have a little bit of an imbalance between the amount of filler material that you are using in relation to the material thickness or heat you are using moving away from the start continuing on with the Full Pass is going to be very hard to get things back under control we want to make sure that we take the time and attention to focus on getting everything perfect at the start of every pass but if everything's done perfectly at the start by the time you start traveling there should be nothing left to do except for just babysit take a look at this example here we can see at the beginning of this lap joint everything has been established with perfect size and really good profile we don't see any overfilling we don't see any underfilling or overheating the amount of filler material that I am using here looks pretty much perfect in relation to the amount of heat that I am welding with here now looking at the weld footage of this one here look at how much time I'm taking at the start I'm giving things a decent amount of filler material to properly fill up the profile but most importantly I'm making sure that I give it adequate heat it's going to take a few seconds for everything to stabilize but once everything is good to go I start moving now what is common is people are going to flash up establish their puddle and then feel the need to get going with everything right away this is pretty common when working with aluminum a lot of people feel pressure to get going right away out of fear of burning through the material without the time time spent to adequately develop the puddle at the beginning of the pass this is essentially a puddle that has not been developed properly before somebody tries to start moving it it takes a little bit of time at the beginning a little more attention to detail we want to make sure that the filler material settles down correctly and the profile or shape of the weld is exactly what we want before we move away from the start we want to keep a close watch on the edges we want to make sure the filler material is blending in smoothly to the base material typically when I flash up for any type of welding joint I'm going to give it good heat right away but I'm also going to give it filler material almost immediately what happens is when you give it filler material almost right away essentially you're going to be heating up the filler material a little bit more than you're going to be heating up the base material giving things a little bit of filler right at the beginning is going to help to prevent any overheating this is really nice especially when working with aluminum but the most important thing that this is going to do is it's going to allow you to hang out for a few extra seconds a little bit of filler material a little bit of extra time to hang out at the start the thinking behind every single start that you do no matter what joint or weld you are doing is that when you flash up to start your Arc we fill and chill as I said giving yourself a little bit of filler material right at the start is going to allow you a few seconds that you can hang out at the beginning and let things establish obviously as long as you aren't getting into amperage which is too high in relation to the material thickness you are using you're going to be able to hang out a little bit longer and you can afford to spend some time to allow things to properly establish this is especially important with joints like a fillet joint or something like that those ones in particular are extremely tough and sometimes really grumpy to get started spending a little bit of extra time to let things properly develop and establish before moving is certainly worth it with a joint like that but as well doing some really thin stuff like this outside corner here same thing a little bit of filler material right off the start and controlling the heat to make sure things stabilize properly at the beginning the philosophy with a start like that is essentially all of the hard work is done at the beginning right there like I said once you start moving with that one all that's left to do is essentially just babysit what you started and established at the beginning of the pass okay so like I said the start has absolutely got to be the most important part because obviously it is the start but the next most important thing that is going to help you to get really good control of your Ark is absolutely going to be the tungsten preparation all right this here this is our little buddy here this is the tungsten electrode now typically when I'm getting my machine set up I want to program my machine with the lowest start amps possible you can see me setting up my Everlast here I have things set up to a pretty low setting that I can start with this will be my minimum amperage on the foot pedal and then once I get the puddle established I can get into the heat a little more with my foot pedal now at low amperage with a really properly prepared tungsten that's a lot of peas this Arc is going to snap up and establish really easily when we start out we do not want the ark to be wandering around sometimes at low amps it's common to see the ark kind of flickering from side to side we want things to specifically lock on and establish an arc on exactly what we are aiming at especially like this one that we looked at already the outside corner joint with relatively thin material if your Arc is jumping from side to side when you're trying to get started with something like that this is going to give you a really frustrating and terrible start to your line and we just talked about how important a proper start is so with a machine programmed at a relatively low start amp at this point let's talk about how I prepare my tungsten so we're regardless of what preparation you prefer using with aluminum TIG welding all that I really ask is that just make sure it is clean please don't use a Tungsten that you might have dipped a little bit maybe there's just a little bit of contamination on it not that much but sometimes when I'm training somebody and I look at their tungsten come on now this is trash don't do this to yourself especially when you are first learning make it easy on yourself make sure every tungsten that you use is absolutely spotless or even brand brand new if you take the time to use a Tungsten that has been prepared properly and is absolutely spotless you are going to thank yourself for it later now hear me out I prefer to run a Tungsten with a little bit of a ball on the end of it oh my gosh no I know that there's a lot of people who would disagree with this but hear me out let's go over perhaps why this might be a good option for you obviously like we're talking about if we want good art control we want a Tungsten that has a very fine point on it now I've talked about this pretty often on my channel channel here but when you run a Tungsten with a pointed tip like this or even in some cases if you're running a Tungsten with a blunted end like this one here it is really common that you're going to see the tip of the tungsten misshape really easy or even in some circumstances they're going to form crazy shapes and in some cases these crazy shapes can go absolutely nuts and do wild stuff like this now the reason that you might see this happening whether it is just fluttering or if you're seeing things completely misshaped and look completely crazy this is a problem with your balance setting what this indicates is that your balance setting needs finer adjustment for the exact amperage that you are welding at now that's a whole another subject I'll send you somewhere to learn a little bit more about that at the end of this episode now when I'm talking about preparing a Tungsten with a ball on the end of it I am not talking about a Tungsten with a ball on the end of it like this no obviously with the end of the tungsten looking like this we are going to have pretty lousy accuracy this is what I'm talking about right here this is a 332 of an inch tungsten so you can see how small this tiny little little ball actually is I have this area tapered back here and then you can see the ball on the end of it and again tiny now the reason especially for people that are just learning how to TIG weld aluminum I recommend doing something like this is essentially with a small ball preparation on the end of the tungsten they're going to be able to get away with a bit of inaccuracy to any balance setting simply because the ball on the end is going to be a little bit more robust against a balance setting that isn't completely perfect this is going to help to prevent any fluttering or shaping on the end of the tungsten so it's kind of a great middle ground in between trying to give us a bit of a break with any balance setting inaccuracy we may have yet still being fine enough that it's going to offer really good accuracy and stability of the arc so if your tungsten has a preparation that's a little bit too big or if you have contamination kicking on it like this here your accuracy and stability is going to be get something new clean it up properly and when you flash up your arcs your Arc is going to lock on much more targeted and is going to remain more stable now sometimes I hear people talk about the actual type of tungsten that they use is going to help with accuracy personally I don't particularly find this to be completely true for aluminum TIG welding I typically use like a 2% lanthanated tungsten like this or a seriated Tungsten even basically I just make sure that these are super clean and the preparation on the end of it is exactly how I want it obviously a lot of people are going to have favorite types of tungsten that they use but just do some research to find out what works best for you and your machine there are some tungsten that are going to work particularly well or work not at all with Transformer or inverter type machines so no matter what you're using just do your research make sure it's cool for whatever setup you have now this last suggestion here that I'm going to make is not typically something that a lot of people assume will help with accuracy however when you start getting into a higher level of different joint configurations with aluminum TIG welding this is absolutely something that's going to help you out a lot and this subject that we're going to address now is our gas settings we talked about this in an episode a little while ago when I did the same thing specifically for stainless steel but the exact same thing goes for aluminum that is right the settings for your gas especially when working on more advanced joint configurations is directly going to affect your puddle stability now when working on basic plate joints you might not particularly notice much of a difference with this at all but like I said with more advanced or tricky joint configurations you are going to notice your puddle is going to be pushed around or a little less stable if your gas set things are especially too high if your gas flow rate is excessive and you are going around corners on stuff like this here you are definitely going to notice that all of a sudden your puddle is going to become excessively wobbly I'm pretty sure that's a welding term or all of a sudden the arc might flicker off and point in a direction that you're not actually completely aiming at now on the flip side of things having a gas setting that is too low probably won't affect anything to do with your accuracy but obviously having inadequate gas coverage is going to affect your welding area or your gear in a different way which is not good but as far as keeping good accuracy to the setup that we have put together so far make sure your gas value coming out of the torch is not set too high now the volume of gas coming out of the torch changes in relation to the cup size that you are using if you're using a smaller cup for aluminum like a number five or something like that we obviously for a smaller Cup Opening want to have less gas coming through it working with an aluminum setup like this here I'm typically going to have about 12 1/2 cfh coming out of the actual torch head and again I'm going to double check this with this thing here this is called a flow meter we're going to put it on the end of the cup and we're actually going to measure the exact gas value coming out of the Cup Opening Now using a smaller cup like something like a number five or number six is going to be a little more prone to the arc being pushed around by the gas value being set a little bit too high simply because obviously the opening of the cup is much smaller and I think you're going to find that going around something like this here if the gas volume is set too high for the cup size you are using the puddle is going to become a little less STI stable and a little less predictable now personally in my torch for aluminum I prefer using a gas lens setup I personally find that the Gas Distribution coming out through a screen in the gas lens it's a lot more even and a lot more stable especially going around shapes and outside corners and stuff like that and when I'm doing something like an outside corner joint I particularly notice a better coverage of gas when using something like a gas lens as opposed to a gas diffuser setup I find that the gas lens and the screen inside of it provides a more even and smooth distribution of gas and anytime that I'm welding aluminum typically I'm going to probably use something like a number 6 cup so using a gas lens for a smooth distribution of gas in combination with something a little lower like about 12 1/2 cf8 or so going around shapes like this one here doing outside corner stuff like this here I was always pretty confident about getting good results that I was very happy with okay I have given you a really good idea of some small details that we can make adjust Ms to to get you potentially a really big payoff with your Arc accuracy taking all these things into consideration together I think you're going to notice that you're going to see a big difference with the control of your Arc now if you want to register and take a free class with me online check out this class here this is going to be an intro to everything that you need to know getting started with aluminum TIG welding this is going to be a complete outline to getting a good understanding from the bottom up with TIG welding aluminum and again it is completely free go register and check it out it's on demand you can watch it as many times as you want do a random act of kindness for a stranger today my name is Dusty James Bill and chill we'll talk soon peace

Channel: Pacific Arc Tig Welding

Views: 193,979

Keywords: tig welding aluminum, how to tig weld aluminum, how to tig weld, tig welding

Id: hhRjOa0v65U

Length: 13min 40sec (820 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 05 2024