Welding Tips and Tricks

At work, sometimes I'm busy and sometimes I'm not. Sometimes I make things out of scrap metal that the company doesn't ask me to make. They know about this and they don't discourage it -- it's great practice and they know I always come through for them at all critical times. I traced a Telecaster body onto cardboard at home and brought it to work. Material, all of which had been destined for the scrap bin: 1/8" aluminum mill plate for the top and bottom.

I'm pretty handy with a band saw.

Getting these pieces to fit up was @#$% difficult.

The sides were 1/16" thk aluminum. This was mostly fusion welding without wire except for when needed to fill small gaps.
No purging and no way to use chill plates due to the shape.

It's good to experiment and get seat time on something like this, but to be realistic: fusion welding alu usually doesn't work too great as the welds tend to be very weak and crack quickly without any filler.

For steel and stainless it's a good option if your fitup is tight. On alu it's never going to be great. Basically the bigger growth and shrinkage on alu under heat combined with the weld contamination of the oxides floating in there makes for a weld that gets under very high stress when cooled and has impurities that form points for cracks.

That's whay you do see people tacking alu, but again these are much weaker than steel tacks, but use filler on the full welds.

Bye, Arno.

I finished welding the guitar. I just have trouble uploading pictures to this site.

1/8" aluminum mill plate and a couple of pieces of 1/2" to support the neck.

This was a bit of a challenge.

Keep your friends close and your tungsten closer.

Fusing .080 aluminum to 1/8" mill plate without backing or purging is a tricky business.

The large access hole allows me to get my hand inside to place the inner electrical stuff.

The plate for the top can be changed to accommodate different pickup schemes (transducers in electric guitars are called pickups, or 'pups').
This plate is for a single Gibson P90 "soap bar" pickup.

Oh, yes, this will be a functioning electric guitar.

Aluminum doesn’t require a purge when welding it. Stainless, Ti and Inconel do. It is also done occasionally on high end chrome moly tubing from bike builders. It’s debatable whether necessary, but it certainly doesn’t hurt for that application.

Thanks for the info, cj. I was actually wondering about that as I was posting.

I've welded plenty of stainless without purging. Often you don't need to and sometimes you can't.
I can see that there are situations where it's a necessity, but there are many jobs where it isn't.

There may be jobs where purging stainless is not done, but there’s no job where it shouldn’t be. And there are times where it’s nearly impossible so products like SolarFlux help out.

I'll ask the company to get some SolarFlux. That's something we could use. There are stainless jobs where purging is unnecessary and ones in which it's impossible. I worked at a place that made stainless vessels and sinks for the pharmaceutical and vitamin industries. No purging was necessary, and none was done.
Worked at 2 welding companies, ditto.
I don't doubt that there are many welding jobs where purging in a necessity, but there is such a wide variety of welding jobs that you might never need it.
If you were welding stainless tables, sinks or conveyors for the food industry you would need to purge the entire room you were working in. Besides the cost of the gas, you'd need a firefighter's respirator or a scuba tank or you'd die immediately.

Timmy_Tiggs wrote: ↑Fri Oct 04, 2024 2:29 pm
If you were welding stainless tables, sinks or conveyors for the food industry you would need to purge the entire room you were working in. Besides the cost of the gas, you'd need a firefighter's respirator or a scuba tank or you'd die immediately.

not really. you simply use purge blocks or even open purge (ie use an spare torch with a big cup to put argon on the back). or something as simple as a bit of tape and foil to close off the back of the weld and put your purge line into. the main reason for not purging is simply cost.

eg i welded an elbow onto a long length of pipe and used a ball of foil shoved into the pipe to act as a dam so i didn't have to fill the whole pipe with argon. then simply blew the plug of foil out after welding. there is a lot of creative ways to do purging.

For welding pipe, that makes sense. For welding tables, sinks and conveyors, it wouldn't. That's why these things are welded without purging.

Timmy_Tiggs wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2024 9:49 am For welding pipe, that makes sense. For welding tables, sinks and conveyors, it wouldn't. That's why these things are welded without purging.

Not be a contrarian, but I’ve welded tons of sinks and counters and made purge blocks to suit the application. As I said, not always required or possible, but it is always a good idea. And SolarFlux is a great substitute when purging is a challenge.

cj737 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2024 11:36 am

Timmy_Tiggs wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2024 9:49 am For welding pipe, that makes sense. For welding tables, sinks and conveyors, it wouldn't. That's why these things are welded without purging.

Not be a contrarian, but I’ve welded tons of sinks and counters and made purge blocks to suit the application. As I said, not always required or possible, but it is always a good idea. And SolarFlux is a great substitute when purging is a challenge.

I'd like to see some pictures of purge blocks. I might want to make a couple. And I'll look into SolarFlux. A few weeks ago the company I work for made a couple of gutters out of 18 ga. SS. That's the first SS ever done here.

There’s a wide variety of easy DIY blocks you can make.

For corners, use ally angle iron.2 pieces to make a tube. Seam weld them together. Cap both ends with some simple flat stock. Drill a hole for the purge hose. Then on the corner of one of the angle irons pieces, mill a thin slit or drill 1/8” holes every quarter of an inch (I used my mill to chamfer the corner then milled the slot).

You can clamp the above block inside or outside of corners for sinks, cabinets, etc. For flat seams (counters) I’ve used rectangular tubing scraps of 1x4x3/16 and capped the ends, drilled the hole for a hose, and then milled a thin slot. Using flat tubing helps also with distortion and allows clamping the sheets down.

Bear in mind for flat sheets, you’ll need to lay spacers across the field to support the sheet when welding the seam. (Obviously).

All these have been made from ally scrap throughout the years. I’ve even gotten fancy (lazy?) and tapped the hose holes and installed quick connects so I don’t have to run to the bottle to turn the valve on and off. Simply connect/disconnect the hose.

It sounds like you could also use a local valve instead of the quick connects. But the quick connects would have the advantage of allowing you to set it up and put it away quickly.
I wish we had scrap steel here. Plenty of aluminum, but I've brought scrap steel from my home shop. There was some steel left over from old jobs but that's mostly gone. The paste might work better for what we do here. But what we do here isn't that predictable.

Is there a particular size of purge block that you've found handy? I figure a fairly small one could be just moved and clamped in position. A larger one might just waste gas.

Timmy_Tiggs wrote: ↑Mon Oct 14, 2024 8:10 am I wish we had scrap steel here. Plenty of aluminum, but I've brought scrap steel from my home shop.

You don't want to use steel for a purge block, use ally.