Thread: Welding Penetration, advice needed.

If you've only welded one side of the tube, it doesn't matter how good your penetration is because you can lever it to make it break but if you weld both side of the tube, you won't be able to lever it to make it break.

From both pictures that you have uploaded the welds look like they have ample penetration.

Hi Stu
If you are pulling the bead metal out of the parent metal ,you can't do any better ,my friend.
Pick it to pieces? Actually it shapes up well!
The bead is a good mitre ,it wets into the adjacent parent metal well, has no undercut,no porosity and no end crater.This meets 99% of the parameters for a good weld bead.

Each weld job will vary in thickness of material and its volume. Every individual piece has its own "sweet spot" setting found by precise matching of the voltage settings (heat input to the weld pool ) and wire speed (amperage and volume build up of metal)

A good operator willlearn to pick the required setting and get the best effect as evidenced by your successful practice pieces.

An operator improves himself by understanding the function of his welder and by practicing and observing the results of the practice and taking the appropriate steps to improve ,if any are required.

The thing to do is record your data on successful attempts. .
Position, Metal thickness ,Wire speed, volts setting, gas flow, should all be recorded.
Experiment now with different thickness and record the results. You have saved yourself, the $150 to $200 for a Tafe course.

Onya Stufart

Grahame

Thanks heaps Grahame. Some would say accidents happen, but as you said recording results is a big plus. I record every thing I do once Im happy with the settings, however I have done this for alloy I will do the same for steel. I dont think it would hurt to do a tafe course though, I might enrole anyway.

Stu

Stu
Some decent welding there for your first hour. Generally on thin walled tube like that I've found you get the best strength be putting as mush heat as you can without burning through. Once you get a feel for it you know what settings that will be on your welder for any particular type of material.

Oh and btw, just so you know, steel is an alloy, aluminium is not.

Thanks mate. I have welded miles and miles of alloy and around 1 meter of steel. So my experiance level with steel is pretty much didly squat. Alloy is a reel bugger to weld at times and not forgiving at all like steel. As you know alloy must be welded hot and fast where I have found steel to be a bit more on the opposite side, Still hot but no where near the same speed.

I was pretty nervous about welding steel, I wanted it to turn out good which apparently it did. Im hoping from here it should get a bit easier welding thinner metal like 3mm onto 4mm and 2mm and so on. Practice and more practice should help me to find the perameters for each thickness. As for steel being an alloy and aluminium not is something I never knew. Thanks mate.

Stu

Hi Stu,
There a bunch of us here that own Migs capable of welding aluminium. perhaps we could look forward to to you giving us ther benefit of your expertise on welding the material.

Many of us don't fully understand the issues of

• different aluminium filler materials for different alloys of aluminium,
  
• the need for cleaning the metal throughly
  
• the fact the surface has an oxide layer covering which has twice the melting temperature of the base metal

Some input from someone who has been there and done it would be helpful if you could manage it.

thanks
Grahame

I can explain it from what I would class as “an amateurs perspective”. The last thing I want to do is try and come across as an expert when I’m clearly not. I’m not even a tradesman. I would be more than happy to tell others of my experience at building my own alloy boat, the problems I ran into, issues with the welder, indoor and outdoor conditions to watch out for and any other issues I came across. Graham, if you’re still happy for me to do that I would gladly do it on the building of my alloy boat.

Stu

Tradesman is just a name.

You have done something many of us have not.What you have experienced in welding aluminium, I am sure, is precisely what the forum would be interested in.Of particular interest would be the problems that arose and how you dealt with them.

If just one of us learns from that and does not make an aluminium welding mistake that you have given us all a way of avoiding then your experience is benefit to all.

I for one would be very interested in what you have to say as I have a mates tinny perform major surgery on.I would sooner avoid any bigtime errors.

YES PLEASE!

Grahame

OK Grahame, I wil start on it this week. Should I do it in this forum or in the metal work forum?

Stu

Hi Stufart,

I'm no expert migger but FWIW I agree with the folks that reckon your second weld looks pretty good.

I wanted to mention two mistakes that smurfed me up with my early migging though - the first was using pure argon for mild steel (mate had it left over from some stainless work) - I could seem to get acceptable results one day, then an infuriating mess the next.

The second was using .6mm wire, which just seemed to blow out all over the place. Not sure whether the problem with this was from using the wrong size tip, or just that the wire was too thin for the work I was doing, but when I finally got argoshield AND .8mm wire I suddenly realised I could actually weld stuff...

Dusty dave

I use Co2 which seems to be great. I have been told you get better penetration using this. My first mistake as Grahame pointed out was rust on my wire. I also found out that using a Teflon liner is a bad move. I tried the Teflon thinking that the wire would slide through easy. No way, the wire grabbed every inch and I ended up with a birds nest at the roller drive wheel every time. I must admit I through stuff across the yard I was so miffed. I put a steel liner in and holy dooly it works great. I tried different tips and found that if you use one size to big you can have trouble. The right tip size is essential from my trial and error. This is no doubt very basic stuff for most on this site, but I found my stuff ups are a very valuable learning tool. If I didn’t love welding so much I would have dragged the Mig welder to the dump along time ago.

Stu

Originally Posted by Stufart

Should I do it in this forum or in the metal work forum?

The welding Forum will be fine.
I am looking forward to it.

Cheers
Grahame