HOW TO TIG WELD ALUMINUM - HOW TO TIG A WEAVE WELD

hey everyone what's up welcome to another episode of Pacific arctic welding my name is dusty today we're gonna go over some TIG welding weaves on aluminum twelve arc heads who watch the show every week what's up welcome back to anybody that's new to the channel welcome thank you for checking this out if you are new to the channel make sure that you jump back and watch some of the previous episodes that I do on this channel we do everything TIG welding related so if you're fan of TIG welding we do all kinds of TIG welding art projects we do TIG welding gear breakdowns gear demos we break down a lot of Pig welding how to's and different techniques and stuff like that so be sure if you're new the channel jump back and check out all those episodes there's a ton in the catalog on my page or you can check the description below there's a bunch listed there as well be sure to follow along on instagram my instagram handles right there as well as my website you can go on my website I have a TIG welding blog I also have all the information on my TIG welding online program I do an online training program for people where I teach people how to TIG weld online so you can check out all that information on my website so today we're gonna talk about some TIG welding weaves with aluminum so first off we'll talk about what a weave is what is it take welding we've a TIG welding weave is basically a pattern of weld where the pattern of your bead is spread out width wise as well as length wise and what this is meant to do is it's meant to actually cover a wider path of weld than what a traditional weld bead will tend to cover so if you ever running a weld bead and your weld bead you can turn up your heat as much as you want you'll always find out that it reaches a point where your weld bead can only get so wide and at this point when your weld bead can't get any wider this is when we usually tend to switch to a weave pattern a weave pattern like I said a darts side to side as well as lengthwise so what its gonna do is it's gonna tend to cover more width as well as length when you're running a traditional weld bead with traditional settings like I said it'll only get so wide so once you reach this threshold where you can't go any wider with your TIG weld without it blowing out too big or getting too hot you'll switch to a weave technique if you ever have a weld bead like I was saying where the weld required is gonna be in a wider gap so I know on a lot of pipe joints and certain setups like that you may tend to have a route our route gap where it will require a fatter weld so if you need to throw a fat or weld in there instead of cranking your settings up and trying to feel a bunch of weld gap with one pass what a lot of people will tend to do especially with pipe and route gaps and things like that what they'll do is they'll do a route pass where they'll keep a very small take pass that is quite hot will penetrate really well into the root gap and once they ensure that the route has whetted in properly and got the penetration that they need on top of it they'll usually throw a cap and for a cap the best thing to do with a wider wealth gap is to do a weave technique so when I'm doing a weave technique I tend to do no more than two to three puddles wide so like I said if I was gonna run a well that was the length of this coupon here what I would tend to do if I was weaving like I said I tend not to go more than three steps across I find if I go more than three steps across sometimes they'll even see people doing four steps across this is just a preference thing I like to actually split my weaves into a couple weaves at this point once I get over three especially for dabs wide I tend to find that I'm actually spending way too much time in one area and I tend to find especially with stainless steel and things like that it tends to heat up my plate a little more than I actually want it to obviously this is super preferential a lot of people will run three four five dabs wide and it turns out fine this is just my preference I definitely prefer like I said if I get any anywhere over three dabs wide I'll split it into two weaves next to each other this can be called split weaves yeah there's a couple different names that people go by but basically what it is instead of doing one big fat run all the way down you'll tend to see people do a couple weaves next to each other this helps just to break up the heat a little bit I find it gives it more of a period where it can cool in between and when you're running back and forth over a big joint like that and you really really need to make sure you get a proper cap on whatever weld you covering it's a little bit better just to break it off into a couple smaller chunks so that way you can stop really take a look at how you're doing readjust and then do the other half to make sure that you bridge the gap that you need to properly again like I said just take my preference as is if you like doing it differently let me know below I actually like here and how different people do these different techniques so if you do it differently or if you tried it and want to let me know how it went just leave it in the comments below I like reading that stuff so there's actually a couple different ways you can do a TIG welding weave so one way that's really popular you'll see this with a lot of different set up a lot of people can use this technique in different scenarios but what they'll do is something called walking the cop so what they do when they're walking the cup is they actually make contact with the cup and obviously this is kind of goofy because I'm just trying to get my camera angle properly but what they do is they roll the cup back and forth so they're walking it along the surface of their plate so instead of sliding or anything like that what they'll do like I said is they'll just use their cup the edge of the cup and they'll walk it back and forth and this way they advance on their weld path by walking the cup like so so you're actually not doing any freehand or any mechanical type stuff yourself that isn't contacting the plate it's basically a way that they'll just lay the filler rod in front of it and they'll walk the cup over the surface and they'll fill up their weld joint and go along like so so that's a really awesome technique you'll see that done a lot with different pipe welding a lot of different scenarios people are really really good at that that's one I'm actually still trying to get better at I can do it I can do it pretty well but I want to get better at it because it looks awesome but the way I'm going to show you how to do a TIG we've today this is the way I was taught when I was just a beginner I was taught that it was really hard to get the perfect role and the perfect walking technique as well as trying to get the rod in there at the same time by the time I learned this technique I was already pretty good at stepping and filling this is kind of just the next step of working my way up to a TIG weave and it's called the freehand technique so with the freehand technique basically it's gonna do the exact same thing that we were just doing walking the cup but instead of making contact we're gonna basically keep our stand off distance like so obviously my travel angle is a little exaggerated here to see you can see it properly on camera but what you're gonna do is this so we're gonna work our way in a pattern like so and the pattern is going to advance us across the plate so instead of making contact and trying to get a perfect rolling technique or walking the cup technique we're gonna do it freehand and I'm gonna show you how I do this so the reason I prefer doing a freehand technique on aluminum especially like I said when you're first getting started it's a little tricky to choreograph rolling the cup as well as timing your fill properly one of the main reasons I don't like doing a walking the cup technique aluminum simply because your cup tends to scratch your material so we're gonna spend all this time getting a perfect technique and laying down a really nice weld bead with aluminum what you're gonna do is you're gonna walk your cup over it and I really hate seeing my scratches on the nice weld bead that I've just finished so you can certainly do it but bear that in mind if you're gonna try this your cup will scratch the material that you're running on and if you're running it over a nice bead that you've just finished doing you're gonna be scratching it as you go this is one major reason why I really prefer to do the freehand technique with aluminum so there's a couple really really interesting things out there nowadays for learning a weave technique there's a company that makes these plates so you can order online they're basically aluminum plates like so you can get them in stainless steel mild steel but they're called weave trainers so I show them on screen right now and I'll put a link to this in the description below because these are really awesome basically what it's gonna do is it's gonna give you a layout pattern that's been etched onto the material with a laser cut or a water cut I'm not sure how they cut them but what this does is it actually lays out a perfect path for you you'll show you on the plate what lines to follow along and it's actually going to show you little spots where you need to add your filler rod showed up to the YouTube channel fabrication series the guy's name is Justin I chat to him a little bit online super nice guy go check out his channel he's actually got a really good video where he's trying these weave trainers out as well so be sure to bounce on over to the fabrication series and stay what's up - Justin tell him I sent you so these things are cool like I said they actually come right out of the box ready to go all you got to do is clean them and then you start welding on them and it's gonna teach you the pattern of how you're gonna do that weave technique as you can see on the screen now I'll show a picture or one of these things it's cool like I said it's all laid out there for you real clear so if you look at it what it's gonna do is it's gonna start and then it's gonna go down and across and it's basically gonna make these diagonal patterns across the width of the weld bead what I like doing I'll show you a weld on screen right now this is some random weave I did on a piece of pipe a while ago I also got some plate I'll show you a couple pictures of weave on plate but if you notice I don't have any diagonal movements across the weld with so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to show you how to lay out a practice plate so you can learn how to do this yourself so what I've done here is I've actually drawn the exact pattern that I usually draw on a coupon when I'm first teaching someone how this technique so what you have here is basically you only have a line to follow that's lengthwise and lines that are square to the lengthwise path of the weld so again like I said this is complete preference I'm not saying that the diagonal pattern is something you shouldn't do do it I don't care that's awesome but what you do is you can actually lay it out yourself or get those weave trainers or something like that so you have a little pattern that you can follow along it's going to help you out a lot especially if you're just learning because I'm going to show you a little technique right now of how I practice this before we actually arc on so what I'm going to do is I'm going to pretend that I'm about to arc up so I'm gonna have my torch at the proper torch angle everything nice and comfortable and I'm gonna have my filler rod ready to go and basically I'm just gonna pretend that I'm in a middle of a weld path here so if I arc up here we go I'm marking up now we're welding what I'm basically gonna do is I'm gonna start at the top of our U or W pattern here so I'm gonna basically do my first dab here I'm gonna dab up top pretend that I've just dabbed then I'm gonna move down I'm gonna dab I'm gonna go advanced and then back up to the top and dab again dab advanced up to the top dab dab advanced up to the top dab dab so when you're moving like that basically what we're doing is we're following our pattern like I said where the pattern is a bunch of horizontal and vertical lines as opposed to a line that goes lengthwise and diagonal lines to that what it's going to do is it's going to get you a pattern that's really dead square another reason that I like doing this is because I find with a diagonal pattern I tend to get too much gap in between the dabs what happens when you get too much gap in between your dabs is you're gonna increase your chances for underfill a lack of fill whatever you want to call it that's just a preference thing but that's what I like seeing when I teach someone okay so now we've been over everything as far as I set up let's turn our machine on we'll go over some settings then what we'll do is we'll run a demo okay so I just switched on my can of weld 201 pulse D this machine is dope shout-out to all the people at canna weld I really really like this little build if you haven't already check out the link in my description I did a full review on this bad boy we broke down pretty much everything to do with it so check that out it's in the description below but basically what we're running here is pretty simple settings we're on AC alternating current I'm running a foot pedal I got about see what I got for settings about 145 amps on the panel here no down slope about 4 seconds of post flow running about 35% on the positive side of the balance and running about a hundred Hertz on the frequency okay so now we got the Machine set up for gas we're going to be running a hundred percent pure argon and we're gonna be running about 20 C F H through the regulator on working pressure let's go over the torch setup here real quick so the torch I'm going to be using is basically a air-cooled torch and it is running a number 8 cup this is a Furyk number 8 and it's running a 332 tungsten setup inside so the tungsten is a 2% lengthening to tungsten this tungsten I tend to find works really really good for aluminum I got a little ball on the end of it there that's the setup I prefer glowing with so if that's what we're gonna use and our plate here what we're gonna do is we're just going to freestyle it I haven't laid my template out on it for the pattern I'm gonna follow but it's been a wire brush I hit it with acetone is pretty clean so we're gonna go for it on this plate here it's 3/16 of an inch thick that's four point six millimeters and yeah that's a plate we're gonna use for this guy like I said we're not gonna lay out the pattern on it like I was talking about I'm just gonna freestyle it but for reference this is a pattern we're gonna use here alright so we're good go let's get the fan going on the machine here another one of my favorite things about this machine is the fan turns off you don't use it after a minute or so and then you turn it back on when you want cuts down on the noise a little bit it's nice okay so on the plate here you can see I actually did scribe little lines to follow just for my length I just want to make sure that I don't get too wide or too thin and area so I'm just gonna follow those lines along there yeah let's go for it so I'm just gonna run it as far as I can here and make sure I could see everything really clearly but like I said order of an inch in between each advance so we'll just go with that pattern on this plate here here we go hold on to your butts [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] whoa that was a long one our arms are tired let's take a look to see how she went all right so we're all here first impressions I can see everything went pretty well as far as how I wanted it to turn out so let's take a look like I said I drew a few little lines to follow here as far as where my center line was and as far as where my width was and overall I did follow the line pretty well everything if you look down at lengthwise like so our wetted edge stayed pretty straight the whole way which is nice even though you are gonna have some little dips in and out as you go through your pattern like so overall we did follow the line pretty well overall another thing that I like looking at is my puddle spacing like I said I just freestyled this one I just went off eyeball to see what my distance was in between each puddle each puddle ended up turning out I'm pretty happy with it there's a couple spots maybe I would have tightened up a little bit near the end here however overall the consistency of it is pretty good that's what you're gonna be looking for there now like I said when you get too far apart if you're adding too many if you're adding too many dabs or adding dabs that are too far apart you're gonna get an empty pocket in the middle here now we don't have that because we have a pattern that's a little bit tighter so the pattern that stayed a little bit tight is gonna prevent those pockets in between each tab so again looking at it like so you can see everything's tightened up pretty good we have our pattern that goes from side to side in a horizontal type manner instead of the diagonal type manner that you see with a lot of patterns again that's just preference you guys and girls can do whatever you want just do whatever is comfortable just make sure that it's even make sure that your puddles are nice and tight so you don't have too much gap in between obviously that's a preference thing but just try and keep it from getting too far apart and you just want to pay attention to your width your wetted edges make sure your wetted is is wet it in nice and nice and evenly and that's what you're looking for overall if we were to take a ruler and throw a ruler across the top here you can see our reinforcement reinforcement also means height of your weld is about 332 of an inch and it's a braid about there it's under 1/8 so under about 3 mil and under it's gonna be pretty good and that's what you're kind of looking for there there's a little demo on how I do my TIG weaves obviously you can try it for yourself and see what you like so if you watch this and you feel inspired to try this up for yourself give it a whirl hit me up on social media again my social media handle is right there you can add me on Instagram hit me up to your message you can just tag me in your work that's cool I love seeing how people do with these exercises so if you give it a whirl even if you get stuck if you want some help hit me up I might I'll try and help you out if I can again you can go on my website you can check out my online program where I try and help people out we do stuff similar to this it's a little more intense break down the basics of welding so it's kind of like what we've done here but a little more simple so it's good for beginners to get a good start with but again this is just the way I do it if you do it differently that's awesome matter of fact I'd love to see how you do it so again comment below I'd like to see how you learned how to do it did you use we've trainers did you just freestyle it and do it like I did here today let me know I love chatting with people I love seeing how people do different stuff like this so I hope you enjoyed this episode this one was a lot of fun it's nice to strike some marks and just goof around a little bit but again say what's up to me online check out my other videos on my channel everybody out there who's watching I hope you're doing good hope everything's cool where you live and do something nice for a stranger today so everyone thanks a lot for watching I hope you have a good one peace

Channel: Pacific Arc Tig Welding

Views: 25,945

Rating: 4.9502072 out of 5

Keywords: how to tig weld aluminum, welding weave, tig welding weave, welding weave patterns, tig welding aluminum, aluminum tig welding, how to weld, how to tig weld, how to tig, aluminum tig welding settings, tig welding, tig, welding, tig weld, weld, aluminum, how to weld aluminum, Tig welding how to, tig welding settings, welding settings, tig welding for beginners, welding aluminum, aluminum welding, tig welding tips, Welding art, Tig welding stainless steel

Id: L2GK6EmT8X8

Length: 18min 38sec (1118 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 24 2020