Welding Tips and Tricks

Here are a few pictures of this stainless steel art sculpture I am working on at work.
I have been getting some great feedback from others on some of the stainless steel
MIG I did to get this going. I will post more pictures as it comes along...

Here you can see this huge jig I made to secure it for assembly. The column
that runs in the middle is just for the jig. Here is this arm attachment I made for our forklift to basically turn it into a crane! Elliot

Good Lord! Scaling from the background, that thing must be about 22' tall!

Can't wait to see what it becomes!

Steve S

Interesting project you have going there Elliot, thanks for sharing it's creation with us. Looking forward to more updates in the future.

Better watch out there Steve. That first picture kind of looks like he may be building a "time out" cage for the greenies around here.

That thing isn't big enough to hold my ego...

Here is some more progress of the art piece. The outer uprights are 18' tall...

Damn!

Missed my guess by four feet.

Must be my ego... It always looks bigger to me.

Again, I can't wait to see what this becomes.

Steve S

Here are some of the stainless steel TIG welds that are going on the sculpture.
TIG is totally my preferred way to weld stainless steel
Elliot

Hey

Thats nice.

Mick

Ehart, the only way for me to get perfect SS welds like yours, is to have someone else do it.
Can't wait to see it finished.

Ehart4130.

Do you also do any carbon steel work in your shop?

Tanks.
Alexa

Alexa wrote:Ehart4130.

Do you also do any carbon steel work in your shop?

Tanks.
Alexa

Yes we do lots of carbon steel stuff too. We like the stainless steel for outdoor applications because
of its the corrosion resistance.

Elliot

CraigLam wrote:Ehart, the only way for me to get perfect SS welds like yours, is to have someone else do it.
Can't wait to see it finished.

Hahah! I bet with some practice you can make some good ones!

Elliot

Ehart4130.

What do you use to keep the carbon steel dust from giving you difficulties with the stainless steel materials and welds?
One advantage is your location being Arizona, a dry climate with a low humidity, but even the iron with morning dew will start pitting.

Tanks.
Alexa

Alexa wrote:Ehart4130.

What do you use to keep the carbon steel dust from giving you difficulties with the stainless steel materials and welds?
One advantage is your location being Arizona, a dry climate with a low humidity, but even the iron with morning dew will start pitting.

Tanks.
Alexa

So far all I we have had to do is make sure we don't contaminate with our our grinders/abrasives. We have to make sure we
keep all of our stainless stuff separate from mild steel stuff. When we are in the middle of a several big projects, we label each grinder so we make
sure its not used on both.

I have had issues with stainless rusting after welding because we didn't do any post weld treatment (passivation ect). Do you have any experience with any of those
processies?

Thanks,

Elliot

Ehart4130.

It is difficult to have both operations, that is carbon steel and stainless steel, under the same roof. Not only for the direct contamination by grinding, equipment, tools, clothing, etc., but also the airborne iron.

There is a lot of practical literature out there for preventative measures to avoid iron contamination of stainless steel. Here is one example:
http://www.bssa.org.uk/topics.php?article=55

As you well noted, the processes can also produce contamination. For example, if the grinder disk used on carbon steel, is used to clean passes on the stainless steel weld, it will be a matter of a few days in a dry climate before the rust starts bleeding out of the weld. Even post weld cleaning will not save those welds.

Instead, there are various pastes on the market that can be used to remove surface contamination.

Those shops that do not practice prevention, have some major rework expenses.

If I run across some down to earth practical stuff, I will send you the links.

Tanks.
Alexa

I did get a chance to try MIG welding stainless today with some 90% Ar 10% CO2 gas with 0.035" 308L wire.
I set the voltage real high at like 23 volts and got a really hot spray with no spatter at all, really shiny nice
bead too. It was also remarkably quiet and smooth.

I also turned it down to about 19V 200 imp on some 11g stainless tubing. At this voltage its about to spray but not
quite because the voltage isn't high enough and it ran pretty good.
I would say for flat and horizontal I actually like it better than the tri-mix gas. I want to try it some more and
see how I like it further. My dream is to get it to run as nice as mild steel, but I think I'm in over my head....

Just some more thoughts.

Elliot