How To TIG Weld Aluminum - Beginners Guide to Getting Started

what's up everybody in this video i'm going to teach you how to get started with aluminum tig welding maybe you're a little familiar with dc tig or you've never experienced tig welding at all hopefully this video is going to give you a good baseline to get going from the very beginning so let's just jump right into it with the things you are going to need first off it might seem a little obvious is the welding machine right here i have the everlast 255 ext which this video is actually brought to you by more about them later and then you're gonna need a bottle of shielding gas in my case i'm using 100 argon we're going to set our regulator at around 15 cfm or cubic feet per minute then we're going to move on to the tig torch this is a number nine sized torch yours might be a little bit bigger but this is just a standard air cooled torch and then we're going to use a standard collet body in my experience it is a little bit easier to control a arc when welding aluminum with the standard body and cup but i'm also using this because this is pretty much the standard collet body that would come with your welder so like i said yours might be a little bit bigger once that's screwed into the torch next up is our cup this is like i said just another standard cup straight doesn't taper in doesn't taper out you can mess with these as preference but this is just what we're using to get started next up is the tungsten this is a piece of multi-mix from blue demon it is three thirty seconds or two point four four millimeters and i've ground it to a slight point here not as sharp as i would grind a piece of steel back in the day people used to ball over their tungsten when welding aluminum but now it is much more common to grind a slight point on it it gives you a little bit better arc control i've used all different kinds of tungsten from even therated to cereated um and then multimixes like this i would probably avoid green but you can pretty much use anything you want the green which is usually pure tungsten will ball up a little bit more people used to use it a lot but i think most people at least that i know have gone away from using green so just try out use whatever you have if you're just learning next this is a 332nd collet this is what actually holds the tungsten in the torch it just slides over the tungsten and the pressure of the back cap locks it down and keeps the tungsten stick out at whatever we set it at i'm gonna set mine at just about a quarter of an inch of stick out which is a little bit under a centimeter and lock it down right there next you're going to need some kind of filler material this is a piece of 16th inch 4043 aluminum from blue demon which is 1.66 millimeters you always want to make sure to wipe off your filler material and your tungsten as well just to remove any dirt or grime that was put on there during the manufacturing process and of course you're going to need something to weld i have a few eighth inch blanks here these are just standard aluminum i'm not really sure what they even are it doesn't really matter because you're going to be welding on whatever you have laying around too and next up is a foot pedal this is not 100 necessary to get started welding aluminum but it is greatly beneficial i'll explain more on why that is the case later but i definitely recommend using a foot pedal when welding aluminum okay once the welder's turned on we need to make sure we are in ac on this machine you adjust that right here puts it up in the ac waveform options if you at all are familiar with welding steel you know you do that in dc negative which means the current flows from the torch to the work piece providing good penetration you can melt aluminum this way but it does not do a good job of cleaning off that top oxide layer that's found on aluminum so you're not going to be able to really get a weld doing that if you were to switch the torch to dc positive meaning the current flows from the work piece to the torch that actually does clean off the oxide layer but the torch gets super super hot and eventually will fail so ac is actually alternating current which cycles the welder back and forth between those two modes that gives you the benefit of penetration when the torch is negative and then the cleaning action when the torch is cycled to positive on a lot of machines you can adjust the cleaning verse penetration cycle this is how much time the machine will spend on each side of the cycle in relation to each other on the 255 ext we adjust that by moving to here where it shows us the cleaning percentage so this is obviously out of a total of a hundred i want to adjust my cleaning percentage to 30 which will give me 70 percent on the penetration side if your machine doesn't have that adjustment don't worry about it another adjustment that a lot of inverter machines have is the ability to adjust the frequency so we just set the percentage of how much it would spend on one side of the cycle versus the other but the frequency is how fast those cycles happen on the 255 you adjust that right here and i like my frequency at around 120. if your machine does not have this adjustment that means it's probably locked in at around 60 which is perfectly fine this is just a lot of parameters that you can play with the more comfortable you get with aluminum welding one little side note on this particular machine you can adjust the waveform i have it in advanced square which is a very nice crisp transition from cleaning to penetration this does have other options for you but that's what i like to stick mine in for now just another thing you can play with but when you're getting started i wouldn't recommend with messing with that too much before we actually get into welding i want to take a second to talk about this video sponsor which is everlast and the 255 ext which is a digital inverter machine that's packed full of features like adjustable waveform pulse a lot of other settings that we've already started messing with and with all those settings and adjustability the 255 ext actually includes a built-in memory function so you can save all of your little tweaks and not have to try and remember them if you are interested in an everlast machine and it comes with a standard foot pedal you can now receive a free nova pedal and torch upgrade by going over to everlastwelters.com and using promo code vos at checkout okay now that we're all set up to weld a good rule of thumb just for starting out is to set your amps to the same as your material thickness if you're using inches so this is eighth inch plate which is 0.125 so we're going to set the welder at 125 amps and something i didn't mention earlier is i'm going to set the post flow around six or seven seconds i'm going to make sure the material is completely clean these are just some acetone wipes from blue demon you could use regular acetone just anything to make sure it's clean some people prefer to brush their aluminum with a clean stainless steel wire brush i don't necessarily do that i usually just wipe it off and hopefully start with some good metal two big things as we get started that you're going to want to keep an eye on the whole time and that's going to be your arc length and your torch angle you want your arc as close as you can to the material without touching the actual weld pool and for your torch angle i would say you'd want it slightly leaning towards where you're going so you're pushing the weld just a little bit but pretty much as close to vertical as possible maybe somewhere between 10 20 degrees max on the layback or you're gonna start blowing too much of your shielding gas out of the way so just a slight bit of angle which helps you see the arc and push the weld along now we're going to come in and strike the ark i like to trip the pedal just to get a little bit of argon flowing and this brings up the point of why i think a foot pedal is so beneficial for aluminum the outer oxide layer that is on the outer edge of the aluminum actually melts at around 3 700 degrees which is a little over 2 000 degrees celsius and the base material which is just under that thin layer melts at around 1200 degrees or around 650 degrees celsius so with the foot pedal you're allowed to start off with those high amps by pushing the foot pedal all the way down and then as soon as the weld pool starts you can roll off of it aluminum also dissipates and spreads out heat very quickly so you often have to adjust your amperage as you're traveling down your weld as far as welding once your puddle forms you just add a little bit of filler to the base of the puddle dab and move along try and be as consistent as smooth as you can and just practice spacing your dabs out evenly not touching the tungsten with your wire just remember the puddle melts the filler rod not the arc so you do not want to be trying to stick the filler into the ark and balling it up you want to just dab it down into that melted metal which will then melt the filler rod once you get to the end of the weld you want to add a little bit of extra rod to avoid cracking and cratering and roll off your pedal slowly all right i probably could have scribed a line and it would have ended up a little bit straighter which is something that can help you out when you're practicing but there's our final result but really that's all there is to it as far as the basics go the rest really just comes down to seat time and practicing in my opinion these flat welds and butt welds are the hardest to make look good so that's what i suggest starting with it's a good way to practice getting your torch angle right and your arc length right when you get that shiny whirlpool it's kind of hard to see how far away your tungsten is you might have saw mine getting a little long towards the end so as soon as you can start laying consistent beads on these flat welds or a butt weld then you can move on to an outside corner which in my opinion is a little bit easier or inside phillip weld i mean who am i to say jump around as much as you want but like i said i do think these are the hardest ones and they are very good practice to get consistent with thanks again to everlast for sponsoring this video remember to use promo code vos at checkout and you'll get that free nova pedal and torch upgrade if this is your first time here i hope you consider sticking around and subscribing and if you want to see more videos like this one you can check out this video right up here and if i miss something or if you have a question about any of this aluminum welding feel free to hit me up on instagram you can just comment on the post about this video and i will try to respond to anything that i can help you out with and there might be others on there that can also help you out with some of your questions but as far as this video goes that's it and now get out there and build something

Channel: Justin Voss

Views: 59,590

Rating: 4.9835486 out of 5

Keywords: welding, tig welding, welder, welder nation, how to weld, metal working, fabrication, metal fab, mig welding, stick welding, learning to weld, getting started, aluminum welding, steel welding, tig weld aluminum, nascar, justin voss, defiant metal, everlastwelders, everlast, 255ext, tig aluminum, hot to tig aluminum, weld aluminum, how to tig weld, hot to setup tig welder, get started tig welding, aluminum tig welding, everlast generators, set a tig welder, welder setup, GMAW, tig

Id: aSGC4zlwUds

Length: 10min 17sec (617 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 18 2020