Welding Tips and Tricks

Hey guys, need some help. I'm building a part out of .250" 6061 aluminum. Need to do a 14" inside corner bead and then a 12" or so outside corner bead on the 1/4" plate. I'm capable of doing decent welds, or thought I was until last night, but mostly on .125" and thinner steel, and am starting to get feel for and confidence with aluminum. Machine is an old Miller Dialarc HF, set on the upper scale 140-310, dial at 60 (I think that is a % so should be around 186 amps). 3/32" 100% Tungsten, gas lense, tried a #6 cup to get into the corner, and then a #7 for coverage, 15cfm straight argon, filler rod is 1/16" 4043. As you can see the weld looks like crap, it feels like the plate might need a pre heat. The tungsten seems to be burning off quickly and the filler melts before it gets to the puddle, balls up and runs away.

Thanks,

Barry

There's a few things going on here.

How quickly are you getting a puddle? I'll bet it's taking a few seconds. Your amps are too low. I'd be thinking well above 200 for the material you are working with. Then bin the pure tungsten and use 2% Lanthanated, it'll hold up much better.

Move up a size from 1/16 to 3/32 filler, too. The combination of filler that is too thin, possibly combined with incorrect torch angle, is what's making your filler ball up and shy away.

Hope this helps!



Kym

Yep, definitely too cold, without a preheat anyway. Curious to what others say, but I'm thinking 250 amps with a stone cold joint temp. And balling of your filler will only get worse with higher amps, especially if your torch angle isn't perfect. Don't get me wrong, 1/16 could be used, but 3/32 will be much easier to work with.

You're already out of the woods for a 3/32 tungsten. Switch to 1/8 and turn the dial the whole way to the right. Realistically, 5/32 would be better, but most people don't have any consumables for it laying around.

Use 3/32 filler minimum, 1/8 would be better.

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you might try adding some helium and 1/8 tungsten
craig

Yup, too cold. Gotta get it hotter. Pure is old school these days, 2" lanthanated, E3's and tungstens like that work much better, pure tungsten tends to drop a lot when welding above 150 A's.

You can also make up for the lack of heat by letting your torch heat up the area to be welded and moving really slow. If you can, swing your amps way up. 200 Amps tends to be OK on 1/4" but I would go higher if you can. If you can't just let the torch get it toasty, you want your filler to melt in to nice hot bath of molten aluminum. I find that it tends to almost crackle a bit when adding filler to a puddle that's not hot enough, makes a some type of buzzing sound almost.

I think we need a sticky thread about welding 1/4" aluminum inside corner joints, that simply states "turn your motherF*#&@*g amperage UP!!" Either that, or step aside and let your husband do the welding!

On my older transformer machine, I would Need to Use 1/8" Pure tung, Balled on Reverse polarity DC prior to welding, I had very similar problems, Pre heat the base metal to the point you see the moisture flash off, and use 1/8" Filler Rod otherwise it melts prior to reaching the puddle. Don't be afraid of too much Amps. Get Puddle going and Haul A$$

Notapro wrote:On my older transformer machine, I would Need to Use 1/8" Pure tung, Balled on Reverse polarity DC prior to welding, I had very similar problems, Pre heat the base metal to the point you see the moisture flash off, and use 1/8" Filler Rod otherwise it melts prior to reaching the puddle. Don't be afraid of too much Amps. Get Puddle going and Haul A$$

Meh, I rarely use 1/8 at work, mainly because I'm lazy and 3/32 is already on the table. You just have to add a lot of it, really, really fast at 350a lol.

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Oscar wrote:I think we need a sticky thread about welding 1/4" aluminum inside corner joints, that simply states "turn your motherF*#&@*g amperage UP!!" Either that, or step aside and let your husband do the welding!

+1

LMAO

GreinTime wrote:

Notapro wrote:On my older transformer machine, I would Need to Use 1/8" Pure tung, Balled on Reverse polarity DC prior to welding, I had very similar problems, Pre heat the base metal to the point you see the moisture flash off, and use 1/8" Filler Rod otherwise it melts prior to reaching the puddle. Don't be afraid of too much Amps. Get Puddle going and Haul A$$

Meh, I rarely use 1/8 at work, mainly because I'm lazy and 3/32 is already on the table. You just have to add a lot of it, really, really fast at 350a lol.

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How do you like your everlast plasma Green Time?

Notapro wrote:

GreinTime wrote:

Notapro wrote:On my older transformer machine, I would Need to Use 1/8" Pure tung, Balled on Reverse polarity DC prior to welding, I had very similar problems, Pre heat the base metal to the point you see the moisture flash off, and use 1/8" Filler Rod otherwise it melts prior to reaching the puddle. Don't be afraid of too much Amps. Get Puddle going and Haul A$$

Meh, I rarely use 1/8 at work, mainly because I'm lazy and 3/32 is already on the table. You just have to add a lot of it, really, really fast at 350a lol.

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How do you like your everlast plasma Green Time?

It's actually my brother's, it works great. Consumables leave a lot to be desired, but I believe that is a torch design more than anything. It's cut anything I've ever needed to cut with it. If I were to use it every day or for CNC, I would look into a lower powered Hypertherm or Thermal dynamics.

In short, for the money, it works great, but it is definitely not a Hypertherm.

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PowerTig250Ex on the other hand, I love. Stock pedal sucks, SSC pedal is awesome.

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Thanks everyone for all the help and advice! Stuck a 1/8" 2% in the torch and had some 1/8" rod, turned the Dialarc up to "11" made some practice beads, and much better results. About the time I got some confidence and was ready to give the real part a try, the 50 amp (I'm an armature ya know) breaker feeding the machine decided it was done after about an inch bead. I have a buddy that works at a real shop with power that was able to finish it for me. Interesting excercise for me though, thanks for all the advice.

Barry