WHICH IS HARDER?? Stainless VS Aluminum Tig Welding 🔥

i hear from people who ask me what is harder take welding stainless steel or aluminum stick with me today we're going to pit them both against each other and see which one gives people the most trouble [Music] hey everyone welcome to another episode from pacific ark tig welding my name is dusty i'm a welding artist from vancouver island canada i do welding projects in both two-dimensional and three-dimensional art surfaces and on my youtube channel i love showing off and teaching the art of tig welding so if you're new to the channel be sure to bounce back check out the previous episodes there's a ton of episodes there for you to watch so i've told this story many times on my channel before but i'll recap it today just a little bit i actually had my start with tig welding on aluminum first i probably stuck with tig welding aluminum for about two years or so before i made the jump to trying to learn how to weld stainless steel now let me know in the comments below if you've heard this one before i heard this from several people that if i already knew how to take weld aluminum learning how to take weld stainless steel was going to be easy anyone i heard it from quite a few different people as a matter of fact so i figured well that's got to be easy then and i gotta assume that all these people who told me how easy it was don't even know how to weld at all period stainless steel is not easy i struggled with aluminum i struggled with learning stainless steel i found them both really difficult now i've got my opinion about what is difficult about each metal but is not equal across the board and from teaching students in my online program or in person i've seen that some things about each metal gives people different problems than others before we get going obviously this is just strictly my personal opinion there are a million different ways you can stack up points prove either metal is more difficult than the other but we're just out here to have some fun today anybody who watches my channel regularly knows i'm just out here to goof around and make some fun about making tig welding videos so i've broken everything down into four categories we're gonna have a look at each category and see which one i think takes the cake for being the hardest so let's get into it the first category is heat control i can definitely say from personal experience both learning myself and teaching others that both of these metals give you your fair share of headaches when learning how to deal with heat control the one that i hear most people struggle with is aluminum with aluminum there is one main difference that sets it apart from stainless steel and that is it doesn't glow red when it gets really hot now as some of you may know aluminum is grouped with a type of metals called non-ferrous metals which to break it down in quick terms it basically it doesn't contain any iron which means basically it won't really glow when it gets hot aluminum melts at about 660 degrees celsius or 1220 degrees fahrenheit give or take which is a really low temperature compared to stainless steel's melting point which is approximately 1500 degrees celsius or 2750 degrees fahrenheit again for stainless it varies on different alloys but general ball park you get the idea so stainless steel because it does contain some iron is considered a ferrous metal there's technicalities in there that make some stainless steels and non-ferrous metal it's a little bit of a gray area but for the most part it contains iron aluminum does not contain iron stainless steel glows red hot when it gets to high temperatures aluminum does not it looks the same so because aluminum does not glow red hot when it gets to high temperatures there's not a lot of warning signs when you're about to get yourself into trouble you can basically be cruising along welding as if everything's going along just fine and boom that can fall through to the other side without any warning it comes from when the material has completely lost its structure and the heat has affected it so drastically basically it turns into a liquid that will not return to its original structure with stainless steel however you do get some warning signs as it gets towards the higher temperatures you can start to see it glow red hot at this point when most people are welding stainless steel they start to realize that they've gotten themselves into trouble at least i hope you should you can either back off the heat you can add more filler rod a couple things you can do to mitigate the heat at this point but with aluminum there's no warning you might think everything's going along just fine like i said but then everything melts through and falls down onto the floor below you so with aluminum i would definitely have to say that the surprise factor plays a big part in this one and it does not give people as much of a heads up as stainless steel does so for this category i would definitely give the first point for being most difficult to aluminum all right the second category is what i'm gonna call puddle stability now although like we just talked about is a little bit difficult with aluminum to tell where your heat is at there is one thing i really appreciate about it as long as you have a clean running torch your basic torch mechanics are correct the puddle generally stays where you want it to obviously there's some spots here and there that's a whole other story now i'm teaching people i generally say that this does tend to be the case for most people when they get going with learning how to tig weld aluminum the arc up they can have a bit of funny angle and they can get away with it the puddle kind of stays where it should now no matter how long you take to set up a stainless torch properly no matter the expensive gear you're using and running properly i'll even go as far to say how much experience you have tig welding stainless steel sometimes when you flash up an arc no matter how prepared you are to deal with it there's no stopping the puddle from acting like a stupid idiot seriously you can be in the middle of a pass and have complete control of what's going on without any warning you put one dab of filler rod in and this stupid puddle starts dancing around like you've never practiced a day in your life i'll be running super clean super stable and controlled beads and i'll come back after a coffee break and start welding like it's my first day on the job especially when you're running passes around coped pipe oh my gosh don't even get me started on that one you take one wrong turn around a corner and that puddle goes flying all over the place there's no rhyme or reason to it sometimes it's infuriating now with aluminum don't get me wrong there are some weird twists and turns that you can make and your puddle can definitely flop over like you have no idea what you're doing however if you've ever welded some stainless steel on some coped stuff you know what i'm talking about even starting a pass i usually find i have to wait an extra amount of time give it extra filler and take the time to make sure it sits down properly get stable and then get going controlled takes a while to get the puddle to control itself before you can get moving with aluminum sometimes it's pretty easy just give it good heat good fill make sure you have good torch angle wait a little bit fill and chill and then usually you have no problems getting going from there so even though aluminum is a little bit precarious still i'm sure a lot of people will agree with me when i give this category one point to stainless steel being the most difficult one oh look at that we're tied at one so the third category is what i'm gonna call finish now when i refer to the word finish i mean the finish of the metal after you finish welding it it's supposed to be shiny it's supposed to be well treated by heat that's what i mean when i say finish now let's talk about the finish you can get with either material because when you dial things in perfectly you can get some stunning results now in my opinion this one is pretty easy i can take a lot of time to set up my aluminum tig to run really clean i can use really great gear really great settings and i can usually have things with aluminum turn out really really nice i can get them pretty shiny without any polish or any tricks like that right off the bat and when i'm doing joints that are really visible i'm pretty confident that i can get them to look really really good but i've got to say when you flip up your welding helmet and see a stainless steel pass in front of you that you thought was perfect and it turns out like a gray mess of dog nothing drives me more insane than that seeing a shiny finish that looks like a stack of gold coins is one of the best feelings when you finish a pass but to achieve this with stainless steel is super difficult i can use a number 36 cup with 65 cfh of gas over two hours of post flow coming out of my torch and welding in an argon vacuum chamber and sometimes for whatever reason flip up your mask and you see that gray gross disgusting past that you thought was perfect why why as i said earlier you can have a day where everything is turning out absolutely perfect super great gear super great settings you're super warmed up you've done the joint a million times and you go for one coffee break and come back and it's a whole different story running stainless passes is a combination of heat speed filler rod and gas coverage we've been over this many times on my channel before there's a video right there you can check it out this one is in the description below i've been over it a bunch to give some basic settings on how to prevent your stainless steel or steel welds from going super grey check that episode out it's helped a lot of people out so far but these factors have to be in such a precarious balance to keep each other in check and all it takes is one of these variables to be out just a little bit and things go sideways really really fast so again when it comes to finish and getting that super clean and consistent shine that you want out of every pass i gotta do it i gotta give a point for the most difficult weld in this category stainless steel there we go it's two to one for the stain train so the fourth category is kind of a funny one but i call this one the forgiveness factor now what do i mean by this one let me explain let's say for example i threw down a weld that i was extremely unhappy with or anybody for that matter it doesn't have to be me let's put aside the topic of contamination that's off the table here and say that the passes turned out pretty clean for the most part but for some reason on this pass you took a funny shape some funny consistency some small detail like that that you weren't happy with you want to kind of try and rework this one fine-tune those details a little bit it is possible before your co-workers peek over your screens and catch you doing it well to be honest with this one like i said if we were putting contamination and that kind of stuff aside here's what i found from my experience i have personally found that i am able to repulse a stainless steel tig pass without using filler rod or more material and make it closely somewhat resemble what i was trying to do the first try usually i'm trying to fix some small details like a puddle shape issue a consistency issue perhaps in some areas i've lost my line or lost my width a little bit it happens not a big deal and sometimes you can hide it just fine with stainless steel now if you were to take that one and set it next to one that you did perfectly the first time you would definitely be able to tell the difference between the two and guess which one i had reworked but for the most part it can pass the sniff test pretty easy and again i'm speaking strictly on cosmetic i'm not talking about structural or anything like that aluminum on the other hand is very difficult to re-pass with a pulse setting and try and make it look like you were supposed to the first try especially without adding filler rod it kind of just looks like you've re-blobbed everything together again and unfortunately it looks nothing like what it should look like when doing our normal filler rod passes so if it's your first day on the job and you're trying to hide something before your new boss sees it you've just made a mistake in my personal opinion you're going to have an easier time trying to hide something you've done with stainless steel tig welding then aluminum aluminum tig welding is going to be a lot more tricky to rework again like i said without adding more filler rod which tends to make the weld pass a lot bigger and again like i said this is setting aside all of the structural issues that might come up with adding more heat input into both of these metals so when it comes to this category again i'm gonna have to give this one the aluminum as being the most difficult one in this category what's that mean we're tied at two so two each they're both super difficult i can't pick they're both really annoying to deal with in their own ways i'm sure i could list out ten more categories if i really needed to whether they're students of mine in person students in my online program people struggle with this stuff but there you go it's completely in my opinion and there's tons of different circumstances and uses for both of these types of welding this is going to be a question you can ask a hundred people and every person is gonna give you a different answer even though there's only two answers you know what i mean everyone has their own journey with tig welding it's all good if you've had a different experience that's awesome i would love to hear about in the comments below let me know what your experience is with trying out either of these types of tig welding and go out today and do a random act of kindness for a stranger i'm trying to spread positivity with my welding channel so if you enjoyed what you saw here today go out and do your part the world needs it again for pacific arctic welding my name is dusty have a good one peace

Channel: Pacific Arc Tig Welding

Views: 34,182

Keywords: tig welding, tig welding aluminum, tig welding stainless steel, how to tig aluminum, tig welding how to, fillet weld, tig welds, Tig, tig weld, welding, tig welding for beginners, how to tig weld stainless steel for beginners, tig welding basics, aluminum tig welding, welding tips and tricks, Welding for beginners, how to tig weld for beginners, how to tig weld, how to weld, how to weld aluminum, welding tricks, tig welding tricks, welding tips, welding settings

Id: 4IclGkYUJPQ

Length: 11min 59sec (719 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 19 2021