John Millican

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Can someone list the equipment I would need to weld aluminum in order of cheapest to most expensive.


I am a pretty good MIG welder but my unit is a flux core one and cannot use aluminum wire.

AlkyIROC

Mig welder. Aluminum MIG wire, Argon gas.

You can get aluminum rod for stick welding but the welds are really ugly.

ede

guess a lot would depend on what equipment you have now and how much talent you have for it. if you have a stick machine all you need is rods, sort of hard to find and use but it's an option. if you have a mig machine all you need is wire and argon. if you have a tig machine all you need is filler metal. if you have an ac or ac/dc stick machine you'd need a high freq unit and a tig torch. if you have a welding/cutting torch all you'd need is filler metal. basically aluminum or any other metal can be welded by any number of welding processes. what exactly are you wanting to know or to do?

John Millican

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I have a cheap Century 110VAC MIG welder. It only takes flux core wire. It don't have an option for Argon (or any) gas.

There always a time where having the capibilty of welding aluminum would come in handy.

Can one machine weld cast and plate aluminum?

Please list my available choices from the cheapest to the most expensive. Then tell me which will produce the best/worst results in the hands of an amateur.

ede

i don't know about your machine, but a lot of them can be upgraded to mig, that is adding a gas selonoid. if your machine can't be upgraded there is a huge market for used machines to help finance your new welder. i like the little lincolns. might want to consider 220v if you have it in your garage, also keep friends and neighbors from borrowing your machine. aluminum is fairly easy to mig weld, just make sure the parts are clean, use a grinder or wire brush (stainless steel) to clean the parts with.

John Millican

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Ede,
my machine can't be upgraded for gas. I wish I would have known before i bought it. Anyway it sounds like you recommend a MIG that does accept Argon for welding aluminum.

I do have 220VAC in the garage, would the 220V machine still be able to do the very small jobs (thin work) that my 110V unit can do?

What are "TIG" and "Heli-Arc" welding? Are they the best for aluminum there is and can they do steel as well? I ask because I have heard the names before and am being curious.

laiky

i used a Lincoln weldpak 155 from home depot for welding alluminum. about 600 with the Mig Kit plus 120 for argon tank.
it welded 1/8 to 3/16 plate very well.

for referencr the weld pak 155 doesn't seem to show up in any lincoln catalog its a home depot special. I just bought a miller 175 for about 750 with tax add the argon your looking at 870 but itsd a REAL welder not some hobby crap. Granted its about as small as a 220 unit you could get but its powerful enough for most jobs 1/4 to 5/16 steel in a single pass.

also the 110 welders aren't powerful enough for alluminum of any useful thickness, definately get a 220 unit.

this has been my experience so far, i'm not a professional welder but i have used these units

WideOpenVTwin

I weld quite a bit at my job, mostly aluminum, and I must say TIG is the only way to go. They are expensive, but they make a very pretty weld on most any metal. Mig will weld aluminum, but makes a mess of it, especially the thin stuff. If you don't plan on doing alot of aluminum welding and don't need a really nice weld, then get a MIG with the seperate bottle of gas, not the flux core. Also, you CANT use the normal MIG gun to weld aluminum, you must get a gun with the spool build in because you can't push alumnum. With welding any aluminum, sand down the surfaces and weld soon after because the thin layer of oxidation that forms quickly will make for a bad looking weld.

To answer your other question TIG is Tungsten Inert Gas welding. It uses a torch made of tungston to melt the metal. A seperate filler rod of whatever type is used. It works similarly to gas welding for steel. Aluminum is more difficult. A TIG machine also has a foot pedal to vary the voltage to get the ideal amount of metal melted, and therefore ideal penetration.
I hope this somewhat helps.

laiky

you can in fact push alluminum, i've done it and most any mig welder will to. You may need a knurled drive roller though. If you have some real bucks to spent you can get a gun that accepts aspool of wire. this is done in many production applications where you will be very far from your power supply and you would need an unusually long gun. When the spool is very far it wont push well. Also consider that in a production environment they don't buy individual welders for each person welding, they use a large power supply that many wire feeders plug in to.

ede

well john i'd be looking for a buyer for my machine and looking to upgrade. if you want to weld steel as well you'll need co2 or a mixed gas, i prefer and use c25, 75%co2 and 25% argon. you'll also need a differant liner and tip for aluminum than steel. mig is very easy to use and makes a good weld, it is also very easy to make a good looking weld that isn't very good in reality. you can push mig as far a travel progression is concerned, actually it's the only way you should ever travel, push anything with a gas, drag anything with a flux. there are "spool guns" for mig welding that work very good, but are hard to handle. cobramatic makes a push/pull gun and feeder that is as good as it gets for soft wire welding, cost several thousand dollars for just a feeder and gun. soft wire works fine on the 110/220 little migs, i've used aluminum and nickle both. the miller i tried it on made a very nice aluminum weld.

tig or heli-arc as most people call it (actually GTAW) uses an eletric torch and a bare filler rod, sort of like gas welding only it's eletric. sometimes you'll also have a foot pedal, but to me it just gets in your way, i prefer to not have a foot pedal. tig is very slow and takes a lot of skill to use.

DM91RS

We weld alot of stainless steel where I work. Some of our frames are around 30' long and dragging a foot pedal would be a real bitch. Most of our welders that tig do prefer a foot pedal though but this is because they sit at a table and don't have to do the frames. I learned tig with the slide control on the torch because I work in the assembly dept. and we have to do finish welding and lots of rework for add-ons and mod's. You get used to what you have to use.

I use a Millermatic 130 at home and it works well for subframes, roll bars, engine stands and about anything made of carbon steel within the size range of the welder. I have not tried alum yet but its in the future.

John unless I've missed it what are you going to be welding on?

Intakes?

Later,

Darrell

Morley

If you are doing just a little filling of material or "welding" of small pieces, Eastwood sells alum rods for use with a propane torch for about $15 for about a dozen of them and I have had good luck with them. That is the cheap end, they also sell a TIG welder for about $1500 for the high end.

ede

knowing how to weld and being careful where and on what i spend my money i use stick on everything i can because it's so much cheaper. wire and gas cost a good bit and for me it's a 40 mile drive to get more. i only have one argon and one c25 bottle, oxygen and acetylene i have 3 each so i don't run out in the middle of something. then too i use my chop saw and portaband as much as i can to save on oxygen and acetylene.

laiky

check out the lincoln web site they have some great books for sale, there is one, 100 years of welding, something like that its about 20 bucks and it will tell you more than you ever wanted to know about welding

davehamilton

Hello, I have used aluminum wire with a Miller 200 mig welder with argon gas shielding and it does work but i wouldnt reccomend it for anything you want to turn out nice-I would use it on outdoor furniture maybe. what happens is when you pull the trigger the first inch of weld you make doesnt penetrate and it sits on top of the base metal until it heats up enough then it starts a puddle, if you preheat the part you are welding with a torch first it helps a bunch but i say dont bother with MIG on aluminum, its pretty much a nightmare. I use a Miller Synchrowave 250 TIG machine for my aluminum and stainless, chrome moly and mild steel welding , i have about $2500.00 in that set up but i would reccomend a Miller Synchrowave 180 if you dont want to spend that much, here is a link to a ebay ad from a welding shop - they sell the 180 for $1450.00 outright - with free shipping includes the foot pedal heat control--You must have that! The tig gun and gas regulator. You should ask them if they will upgrade the torch to a water cooled unit and then you can build your own water cooler set up with a little giant water pump from the hardware store and a 5 or 8 gallon water tank. The air cooled torch will get too hot to hold pretty quick doing aluminum. Then go to your local welding supply and rent an argon bottle- you just swap it out when empty - $6.00 month plus the gas http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...tem=1751200301 if you have any questions you can ask here or email me at dhamil@texas.net Also you might check with your local Miller weld supply , maybe they will make you a deal on a 180 or 250 TIG machine, Later , Dave

Jza

Just a guess, but I think he's going to be using it for those LT1 intakes. If that's the case, I'd say use one of those high-freq TIGs for working on that and putting out nice pieces. It costs out the ***, and has a bit of a learning curve, but your options are unlimited after that..

uidzer0_z28

believe it or not my mother is a welder = ]... anyway she paid about 2K for her tig/argon welder with that you have a selection of metals you can weld

John Millican

iTrader: (1)

Thanks, I learned alot in this thread.