TFS: 5 Aluminum Welding Drills

what's up everyone so this is actually one of my favorite aluminum welding drills that we run exclusively in our aluminum TIG welding classes here at TFS it's actually five welding drills or five exercises you can do with only two pieces of metal so if you guys want to follow along here make sure you head over weld metals online.com check the links in the description I've got all this stuff laid out here exactly what we're doing so you guys can keep up with it plus take advantage of our 10% off discount code TFS ten at check out all that infos in the description there so you guys can follow along and hopefully duplicate the exact same results we get or at least have a pretty good idea here so let's get going alright so the first thing we're gonna need obviously something to weld on these are aluminum eighth inch thick two inch by four inch coupons part number al 1/2 5-4 they are sold in packs of ten you'll definitely need at least a pack of those the more the merrier and this exercise is kind of addicting so try to get a few of them while you're up there we're gonna need some filler wire I'm using two different sizes on this on this exercise here I'm gonna use some er 4043 1/16 inch and I'm gonna use er 4043 3/32 inch or two point four millimeter and 1.6 millimeter these are all sold in packs of 100 you can get them there you can get them wherever you want but those are the sizes that I'm gonna be using on this one my cup of choice here is going to be the stubby kit out fit it to my number 17 seek a world wide kit and my tungsten is going to be laser tungsten sized 332nd and we're gonna be pushing about fifteen cfh maybe at maximum twelve to fifteen out of this out of this cup here the best part about this the these stubby kits is these are standard consumables number five and that's what I like to weld for aluminum the most threads right in and these include the wedge call it and it includes tungsten which that's actually a really awesome deal so if you don't have one of these things I highly recommend doing it you can use standard consumables all day long you can use the regular 17s that that it comes with there's nothing wrong with doing these I recommend those standard consumables you don't really need gas lenses but you can use them but you cannot use is jumbo consumables you cannot use number 12s number Ten's number 16s none of that stuff you definitely want to do that will get kind of into that and maybe a later episode about why you don't need that much gas so my preference here number five cup that's what I'm gonna use and that's what's going into the torch right now my tungsten has been sharpened nothing fancy it will kind of round itself over a little bit now if you're not sure about whether you should ball your tungsten or sharpen it or whatever the case is I've got a really great episode and I'll tell you flat out there is no right or wrong answer to that one if you want to blunt it ball it whatever leave it perfectly sharp or try to get away with it doesn't really matter especially if you're following with the settings so make sure you prep your tungsten accordingly however you like okay so I brought the prime well back up for this this episode here now a lot of people have been asking for updates about this particular machine and yes it's still kicking ass we still use it in the classes I still like it but the best part about it an update they now ship it with the better pedal not the clunky junky one that nobody likes they ship it with the good rocker panel like the SSC style pedal really awesome so I got a link in the description for this obviously if you want to go ahead and grab one with our link we get a small commission and I really appreciate that so if you have a similar machine you'll have either a whole lot of these knobs not many of these knobs but the settings that we're gonna run you can still access the majority of your machines will still access those if it doesn't get it as close as you can and if you don't agree with my settings well get to wherever you want to get to or try mine or whatever it's about being flexible anyway so give it a shot if you if you don't like it or if you do like it whatever give it all a try so our starting current there are up slope we don't need these at all because our pedal is plugged in so when our pedal is plugged in these aren't absolutely useless they don't they don't even work they don't even function so we're not gonna worry about those the same with down slope and end current we're not going to worry about those either because they are also non-existent or don't even function or don't work whenever the pedal is plugged in so since my pedal is plugged in we can set these wherever it's not going to matter not one single bit okay what you do need to worry about is your main amperage in this case it says welding current that we need to set to 125 amps that's where we need to be at for this exercise we're you know we've got a pedal so we've got everything in Queen you know 10 and 125 amps or whatever it is it's your minimum amount goes to make sure that you are on a/c not DC we need to be on AC your AC frequency this one straight up is about 120 Hertz or so and 120 is a good place to start that's where you should kind of normalize all of your welding at now all of the people that have been in and out of here have you know been very confused about frequency we set everybody to 120 Hertz and say learn on that one it's not too low of a frequency where you freak out and you're you know you're forced to jump into the den of holy hell I'm gonna figure out how to work the puddle really quick but it's not too high where it becomes a crutch where you're sitting there waiting on a well pool to form and you know making it easy easy bake oven all day long all right so 120 Hertz is a good place to start set your balance to about thirty percent positive 70 percent negative it's about here on this dial so if you've got a machine where you can do that get yourself in the thirty percent positive 70 percent negative range remember that some machines will display the negative side instead of the positive side you should know what machine you have if it does that so that covers everything on this top row right up here pre flow if you have it give yourself a good half second it's always a good thing to have your base current this is for pulse this is also for pulse this is for pulse we're not pulsing so there's three knobs right there that we don't have to worry about we are not going to pulse for any reason whatsoever we do not need it post flow set yourself up to about five seconds on aluminum that's about all you need the aluminum itself is not reactive we don't have to worry about it like you know contaminating with the air and stuff like that aluminum will not do that but your tungsten will so a good 5 second post flow will protect your tungsten from contamination or oxidation this means that it will restart a lot easier and some of these things that we're doing in this drill require a pretty serious restart or a very refined precise restart if you will the other thing I should definitely mention your torch goes in negative your clamp goes in positive this does not change for any reason whatsoever so now that we're set up let's start welding something exercise number one so we're gonna take two coupons that's all we need to run this we'll take the one lay it flat take the second one and we'll place it so that the face of the vertical is lined up to the edge of the horizontal okay so basically the one that goes on top it's gonna be faced off with the actual edge of the one that goes on the bottom okay take extra special care to make sure that you have them lined up just right okay the first exercise that we're going to do is the Itano stack meaning without filler no filler at all okay we're gonna fire in toward the upper coupon not way up here or anything else like that we're gonna be just above that joint itself or just above that line that separates the two of them we're gonna fire straight into it pretty heavy on the throttle or pretty heavy on the amperage as soon as that little corner blows away or it starts to melt gravity is going to want to pull it downward toward the lower coupon at that point you're going to direct or point the arc toward the lower coupon and it should pull down and blend together aluminum is not always going to do that but this is where it makes really good practice when you do this now this does happen relatively quick that's it literally just that fast that's how fast it actually runs now we're gonna take this spin it around ever so delicately double-check our alignment and we're gonna try it again this time I'm gonna go a little bit slower now there's something I should mention on this one it's not a magic wand just because we wave it around all like whatever like doesn't mean that it's going to just happen to stick together or just you know magically stick together so it's all about the control the other thing we need to pay attention to is watch out for your fingers if your fingers are on the backside of this metal they're gonna get hot so make sure that they are moved out of the way before you go in for your tack I'm gonna go a little bit slower on this one [Music] just like that okay now I'm going to tell you the same as I tell all of our students that come in and out of here contrary to popular belief adding tungsten to the well does not strengthen it so whatever reason people do this they see it get hot and they smash it into their don't smash it into their we move it downward or we rock it only slightly we don't push it into the whelmed okay it's not going to strengthen it so that's lesson number one now we're going to turn it on its side or at least we're gonna have it up like a kind of like a tent here right so two faces at 45 degrees this is the joint that we're gonna run right here okay I'm gonna grab a piece of 1/16 inch or 1.6 millimeter filler wire the joint that I'm gonna run is basically a butt weld it's nothing more than that but the discipline I want to I want to enforce on this one or the one that I really want to act with is I want to make sure that I push my weld pool up to the edge without blowing the edge over okay the other thing we're gonna pay attention to is if we're a little bit too hot or a little bit too snotty on that weld pool it's gonna want to slump just a little bit it's gonna want to fall down so gravity's gonna want to make it sag just slightly we don't want that either we want to maintain the right temperature just right okay the other thing is we have no safety below us there's no backer underneath this underneath this joint here alright it's completely flow through right so if we go way to friggin hot and we just sit there for days and days and days and melt it down it's gonna fall out a big puddle of molten goo your grip is gonna be the hardest thing to deal with on this one I particularly like this one because it forces you to go out of position or into a position that's a little bit less comfortable okay so if we're always perpendicular to our route and these phases are at 45 degrees that means that our torch angle going into our route has to be at 45 degrees so 45 degrees to get to the route but we also have to watch the forward angle our forward angle is the direction of travel we need no more than 10 to 15 degrees of a forward angle or the direction of travel so we got to make sure that we don't hook our hand or bring it in this way or anything else like that we got to make sure that it stays perpendicular to our joint and we're gonna have to slide our hand or moving along this direction okay that is relatively tricky to do for a lot of people so you can bring it closer to you and run praying mantis by kicking the torch the butt of the torch down below the table and you can weld it right in front of your face some people get along with that just fine other people go right over the top of it and they can see it just fine they'll just leave a little bit of slack kind of like hold it like a cigar like this they'll just bend their wrist back and fire along and run it this way some people can do it that way other people they'll just kind of tilt their hand sideways or you hold it like your normal grip put your palm down turn the torch the opposite direction and you're already there just like a regular steady stationary perfect grip okay all you're really going to pay attention to is you have a good line-of-sight on this joint but I really want to make sure is that I have a good solid weld pool it's not coming in too cold it's not too hot making sure that the edge of that weld pool the toes of it run right up to the edge of that coupon not to blow it over [Music] but also not to come in too cold taking my time but not forever really mining the antlers my foot pedal is not going crazy right now but at this moment I'm tapering off a little bit let's bring it back slightly make sure it'll blow the edge away there and there's our first joint right there this is where people freak out we're gonna do an edge weld okay we're still gonna use 1/16 inch filler but this time I'm not gonna change anything on that machine I'm not gonna change any of the amperage or anything else like that we're gonna watch it very carefully and we're going to control it we still have a hundred and twenty-five amps that can come out of that machine but what I want to do is set my torch up and I want to initiate the arc just by stepping on the pedal until I get that first point of resistance where the arc will start up okay as soon as I have it I must slowly increase my amperage until I have an actual pool on the edge of this material okay this is all about the control that's the whole point of this exercise is the control a lot of people freak out they're like hey there's no way in hell I'm gonna be able to do that well believe it or not it is a beginner level exercise so here we go I'll show you how easy you can just blast right on through this soon as I have my whirlpool pretty much just gonna hold it and maintain it I want a nice tight tore tight my rod is being kept closed and my filter is and we're just dropping it into the leading edge all I really care about is what's in front of me right now I don't care about what I left behind I don't care about where I'm not even at yet just want to maintain that weld pool this may be 30 40 45 amps tops I'm coming up to the edge reducing my amps make sure I don't blow that edge away couple extra little droplets and we're out it's really not that complicated trust me you'll you'll get the hang of it real quick all you got to do is really pay attention to what's going on in front of you now a lot of people like to kind of cheat this and a lot of people miss a lot of these important things so let's just show you a few of them instead of just doing this weld again you can always rewind it and play it back let's show you where people usually kind of screw this up or try to cheat it the first one is coming in way too hot you do not by any means want to smash down on that pedal and get this thing lit you just want to barely barely touch the pedal until the arc initiate s'right if you go any hotter than that or you take way too long to get moving that corners gonna disappear really quick there's no place for the heat to go so we need to make sure that we just barely started get our pool initiated and get moving but if we fail to do it this is about what it looks like it's pretty nasty now everything is pretty much GE and I'm adding filler but it's not going anywhere and it looks like my torch height is like huge there's nothing we can do with this so don't try to save it don't try to keep on jamming filler in there it's wasted just cut bait take your foot off the pedal move forward a little bit and restart but a lot of people get to this point and they say oh wow I was way too hot on that one so let me just dial it back a little bit they come in a little bit too cold oh I just will go in and in and out of it yeah we'll just just tap it a couple times and that that extra bet could make it yeah that's good right there this you big old fat drop right here yeah that's that's exactly what I want right there that'll that'll hold nobody will ever notice not not at all no these are what we usually refer to a solder droplets they're absolutely no good no good at all we want to make sure that we have an actual weld pool which will develop on that edge you need it you want it it has to be there okay so the other thing that I don't know why this seems to make sense but they try to cheat this and they say well Justin's not looking or in this case nobody else is looking and I can make it look like a weld so screw it well you're only cheating yourself this is what usually happens watch very carefully alright says our fool and here we go yeah absolutely did you notice anything kind of specific about that or particular about that well yeah the same amount of filler snot that was on this wire when I started is the same amount of filler snot that's not there when I stopped that's what we call phantom dabbing that's moving the filler rod with a puddle on top or a weld pool but not introducing the filler again you're only cheating yourself I really don't need to go over that one make sure that the filler goes in and it comes back out so rod goes in rod comes out we're just tapping the leading edge we don't need to force it or stuff any of it in there we're just tapping the leading edge finally what we end up seeing is people get in that zone and they get moving on it and they're building this beautiful weld and bead profile over the top of this but they failed the taper out at the end of it is we're not paying attention so we need to make sure that we're you know cognizant or we realize that we're coming up toward the end of the of the actual coupon itself and it's already getting heated up at this point so we need to make sure that we're starting to slowly back off or taper out or reduce our amperage as we're moving along otherwise that corner is gonna disappear just as fast as it did in the beginning so let's just pretend for a minute that I was not aware of that or I was not paying attention to it watch how fast this actually disappears and where it disappears that [Music] so I got the beat started everything is going good I'm just gonna keep my foot lock right here not gonna increase or decrease at all oh man look at that see how fast that went away but what's more interesting about it is it started to really fail about this far back and not just at the end where it was at so not too hot in the beginning no solder droplets no phantom dabbing make sure you mind the taper on the way out this one is actually a beginner well it's not that hard next up is a relatively tricky one this is your fill it weld or sometimes called an inside corner or if you're doing a tea joint it's a tea joint either way they're all to fill it well what you need to make sure is that you have the same thing we are perpendicular to our route in this case we have a horizontal face and a vertical face which means we're 45 degrees to get down into that route what makes Philip joints ridiculously difficult is that the cone off of the arc will fan or splay outward hit this face hit this face and not get down into the root it pretty much puts a big giant pinhole in it so what we need to do is have all of the amperage firing into that up until this point there's no way that we've really gone to all 125 available amps but right now you bet we will we're gonna need every bit to actually get down past those two faces that are melting away and into that route it's going to open up its going to keyhole on us but we wanted to actually open up and keyhole past those two faces and actually get down into the root at that point a whole lot of metal has come back out or a whole lot of metal is melted away we need to put a whole lot of metal back in in order to make this joint happen that's why we switched up to our three thirty second or two point four millimeter filler on this one I ditched the 116 I'm on 332nd right now we need all the power in the world we need to keep it at 45 degrees we need to make sure that we keep it nice and close we can't keep it too close because this is gonna build up pretty high but if we keep it too high it's gonna burn away the whole thing I mean Philips are tough if you aren't getting the hang of this right away you're gonna need to maybe skip this part and come back to it later it is one of the more and ones but if you sit through a class here at EFS will pretty much almost always get you into fill it's on the first day or at least in eight hours which is a really good thing here's what we're looking for so I got my full started I get my wire in there and I'm making sure that each time I advance it's actually opening up it's getting down into the root so far I have not went off the pedal and still 125 they have full throttle the entire way in every time I add this big giant clump of filler it cools the weld pool started to back off now a little bit here at the end that's all I need so there's our Philip now at this point you've already gone through four different exercises we've gone through a Netaji nystagmus been on an angle or an out of position but well if you will with a very strict discipline we've gone through two edge welds but we'll count that as one exercise itself and we've hit the fill in the next thing you still have all of this available space left over on your on your coupon so fill the thing up we can run some padding exercises we can just literally you can go for all kinds of different designs and I'm going to encourage you to do exactly that instead of just running straight lines across the thing all day long try changing directions try doing a bead that has a weave in it try doing a tight stack try doing a loose one try making circles try feeding from the back try feeding from the side when you get tired of feeding on the flat side flip your torch go horizontal go vertical go diagonal it doesn't necessarily matter try to screw yourself up mess the part up it doesn't necessarily matter what you do this is all practice so if you completely grenade the tungsten and you know q-tip the everlasting crap out of it and melt the whole part down and just completely destroy it who cares you're practicing that's the way that all this works so in short get out there burn some friggin metal and have some fun with it don't take it so seriously just burn it up screw it up do whatever you want because that's partially how you learn now if you want to learn all of this in a hurry and you want some legitimate feedback go ahead and sign up for a class we have the link down in the comments below just as well as we have all of the information you need to get a hook up or a good deal from weld metals online also supporting us quite a bit if you do that so we really appreciate that that's gonna wrap it up for this episode I want to thank you guys for watching as always and I'll catch you guys on the next round go weld something already

Channel: The Fabrication Series

Views: 465,361

Rating: 4.9235697 out of 5

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Id: YoWSOC_Gx0w

Length: 23min 24sec (1404 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 23 2020