MIG Welding Aluminum for the First Time

what's going on everybody welcome to another episode of I'm out of my element the first episode was when we tried to MIG weld in the previous video I'll link it up here haven't made weld in a really long time set up a new machine I got and did a little bit of welding this little could use some work today is gonna be even better though because today we are going to not only MIG weld but we're gonna make weld aluminum and I've never done this before I know you're normally supposed to have a spool gun but we're just gonna do it with this old machine right here this is the glued Beaman 140 MSI and unfortunately for them they are also the sponsor of this video and if this doesn't work out I'm definitely just gonna blame the welder because if there's no way there's no way it could be me but yeah thanks for Blue Demon for sponsoring this video there where I get all my filler metals from I'll link them below and yeah let's figure this out okay so right over here I've got the machine sitting up on top of my egg welder like I said no spool gun but just gonna run the aluminum through the lead here this leads about it's about six feet long and the reason I threw it up on top of the TIG welder is because I knew I was going to need argon and there happens to be some right here so I'm gonna unhook this make sure the bottles off hook this from the TIG welder into the back of the MIG welder okay next we obviously have to put some aluminum in it and I have some 5356 from Blue Diamond because I was told it has a better chance of actually making it all the way through the line without getting all bunched up the wire that's in here is really dark because I was messing with some flux core welding so that's why it looks a little different look how pretty this is I would think with aluminum is probably even more important not to get any kinks in the wire okay now hopefully I'm ready to feed the wire all the way through I'm trying to hold the lead out so it's got like a nice big loop there it is okay now we can turn our bottle on I have no idea where to run the gas oh yeah right around 20 right there don't know if that's right or not okay now the fun part we should be ready to go I've got some little scraps here these are just laser-cut drops that I chopped up about 90,000 stick and I have some small ones over here gonna start off with it's important to keep the lead straight and no big kinks or anything like that this one's kind of short which helps and hurts that it helps it because it doesn't have far to travel and it hurts it as in like there's not a lot of room to leave like a big loop [Laughter] okay so that one really black the welds not too bad does look like I need more penetration I'm gonna put those try the welder out in the automatic center guys mode cuz I got it turned up pretty high so maybe my volts weren't high enough and then I don't know if I need more or less gas let's try it before just like this before we had just the gas okay it looks to me like it's burning up the wire so fast so that would mean any more wire speed I guess just try wide open I don't think that was right okay that was apparently way too much amperage so I think I still think I need more gas so I'm gonna turn the gas it up I'm gonna go back in the manual so we can keep my try it with the wire speed up and just turn the bolts down and I'm gonna go up with the bolts a little bit okay still a little dark honestly not sure if that's normal the weld looks fine it's just not penetrating so I noticed that moved yeah now I can't twist it before when I twisted this I noticed this in my other videos this whole thing would spin then the inside part was loose so wish I would have fixed that any other videos still pretty dirty well we might be getting somewhere wonder if more is better yeah let's try it I'm assuming even in MIG welding aluminum it's still finicky and likes to be clean so we're gonna wipe them down safely infuse a couple of them to go [Music] what I've learned so far you have to run higher argon flow than you do when you're TIG welding I'm up around like in the 40s someone's gonna tell me that's wrong but that seems to be what's working best and you don't want to run the welder in automatic mode because I have the amperage wire speed cranked all the way up that way I get enough enough speed of the wire but I have my volts turned down and if I every time I've turned it into automatic is when that one time when I fuse the wire right to the tip I think just because it cranks the Volt so high think I need more penetration I guess I could try slowing down not very pretty let's give it a little strength test I mean it's pretty strong like yeah I mean it's got penetration even though it looks like it's just sitting on top okay too much vaults does not work okay believe it or not well almost followed by chair but we better not I think I'm getting the hang of it that time very at the very end of the last weld I noticed when I decrease the my distance my wire stick out that helped a ton so we're gonna try going super close on this one knows it okay I'm well aware that it's not perfect but I've seen a lot of aluminum MIG welds and they never looked great to me this looks on par for me I mean for the very first one that I actually got to lay down successfully the only difference from this world to this was that I preheated the metal with the torch and I didn't even hit it for long just getting it hot I noticed that I needed more penetration but every time I increase the Volt's it would just start burning and balling the wire up it's like it couldn't handle it so I needed more heat in the part that's why I preheated the aluminum and that was the ticket I have enough parts for one more so let's try it one more time maybe we can get a nice clean looking weld the whole way across and finish this video out I can honestly say I've never preheated 90,000 sheet metal before I welded it this is new I've also never made one of the aluminum well guys I'm really happy with the progress that we made I think the second to the last one actually looks better than that last one that last one I did more of a circular pattern trying to get it to have a nice arc on the back edge and I think I built up too much material but I mean we went from never MIG welding aluminum before and honestly looking like we've never done it before - coming down with something reasonably middle-of-the-road presentable I would say but I mean just in that short amount of time like this is all the practice beads right here I didn't know more than that so you know double that time and we'd be even better biggest takeaway from this was to preheat the metal because you do want all that wire speed and you don't want a lot of voltage melting the wire you need to get the metal hot before you start welding now there are people out there who can make a pretty nice looking aluminum MIG weld it looks pretty close to some of the really nice MIG welds you see on steel I would say not quite as nice but it gets there if you know what you're doing but in my opinion that's never gonna look as good as TIG so why would you aluminum MIG weld well a big one would be is if it's all you have is a MIG welder as far as I know every machine is capable of aluminum MIG welding you still weld in DC you don't need a c4 MIG welding that's a key factor you just need some argon and if you have a bigger machine you might need a spool gun and that's gonna help you not kink up the aluminum wire in the line that is why they use spool guns that's why I didn't have to because this lead is so short but you can build up aluminum shavings inside that lead if you do this a lot on these kind of machines that's why I dedicated aluminum spool gun is the best if you're gonna be doing a lot of it so that would be reason number one reason number two would be just for time I know Featherlite they make aluminum really nice trailers they make a lot of the semi trailers at the NASCAR haulers use and all their aluminum ones are MIG welded and as far as I know maybe they do some TIG welding but that's just for speed they want to build amount of aluminum to have them light and they need to build them fast and they don't need nice pretty welds up under the trailer and all the spots that you're not going to see even though their wells do look really nice but you know what I mean that's the TIG MIG thing those trailers would probably take you four or five times as long if you're trying to tickle them all like that's the difference but yeah I hope this is a good overview like I said I'm not an expert in this and I try to let you know when I'm just messing around goofing off experimenting taking you along hopefully we can both learn something along the way together there are more fabrication related topics like TIG welding and a lot of stuff I've done in my past that I do feel more confident NOT I wouldn't say playing an expert role but definitely giving like some hard fast this is what I know this is what I know works versus like stuff like this where I'm just learning like you might be but that's it for this video guys thanks for Blue Demon for sponsoring if you guys need to pick up any filler metals for your shop stuck in the house low on supplies you can order it right from blue demon I'll leave a link down below if you want to see more MIG welding aluminum related content let me know down in the comments I'll try to gather as much knowledge as I can from people who are more well-versed in this and share it the best I can with you guys if you like this video please give it a thumbs up if you're new to the channel I hope you stick around and subscribe if you hit the little bell next to the video you get a notification every time a video comes out you don't have to I appreciate you being here all the way to the end of this video and I'll see you in the next one [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Justin Voss

Views: 211,556

Rating: 4.7933378 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, mig aluminum, mig weld aluminum, how to weld aluminum, wire weld aluminum, GMAW Aluminum, blue demon, 140msi, 120v welder, argon mig, first time welding, Beginner welder, mig vs tig, why mig aluminum, how to setup a welder

Id: kx3UUdLh5Do

Length: 16min 16sec (976 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 25 2020