Welding Tips and Tricks

I am going to be fabbing up some luggage panniers for a motorcycle.

Dimensions are 15x12x6

Since there will be a press brake involved that dictated my material choice (90deg bends)

The material I chose was 5052. What I did not figure on was would I need a different filler material.
I have a ton of 4043 filler rod and from what I can tell that will work just fine since this in not a critical weld.

Is there any particular reason I should NOT use this and instead try to scrounge up from 5xxx series filler rod?

I agree, this should go fine with 4043. I keep 5356 at work almost exclusively, because most of my aluminum welds are 5XXX and 6XXX, and I've gotten very good results on both. For 3XXX through 5XXX, 4043 has always given fine results. (To clarify, I had difficulty getting helium-tight welds on 6061 using 4043 filler, 5053 worked much better, and was a great compromise for anything but 3003 and below.)

The only issue you're likely to hear is color matching, if you intend to anodize. If I understand it correctly, 4043 will make a color difference on 5XXX in anodizing. There are qualified folk here to advise you in that case.

Steve S

Well the SWAG off road bending kit showed up today, so once that is welded together and on the press will do some test welding and see how it all goes.

This will be the first time on 5052 so really interested to see how much scrap I end up producing from all of this.



I will use the 4043 since that is what I have on hand for now.

if you can, catch some images of work in progress.
craig

Otto Nobedder wrote:I agree, this should go fine with 4043. I keep 5356 at work almost exclusively, because most of my aluminum welds are 5XXX and 6XXX, and I've gotten very good results on both. For 3XXX through 5XXX, 4043 has always given fine results. (To clarify, I had difficulty getting helium-tight welds on 6061 using 4043 filler, 5053 worked much better, and was a great compromise for anything but 3003 and below.)

The only issue you're likely to hear is color matching, if you intend to anodize. If I understand it correctly, 4043 will make a color difference on 5XXX in anodizing. There are qualified folk here to advise you in that case.

Steve S

At my last job we would occasionally have parts anodized and 5356 is the correct filler for that, as you say.

Never had any components to fabricate from Al that needed to be helium leak tight, only stainless.

Second the call for photo's

Just got the SWAG off road kit for the 20 ton press, once that is put together will definitly take pictures of the process in building this and post them up here for my humiliation and your entertainment.