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Success TIG welding brass

In the past I have TIG welded brass using DC and silicon bronze filler wire. Really crappy stuff to weld. A while back, before I got my new welder, I had to TIG weld some manganese bronze which is about 30% zinc and really crappy stuff to weld. To weld it I had to use AC and aluminum bronze filler wire. So yesterday I thought I would give my new square wave welder a shot welding brass and manganese bronze. I used silicon bronze filler, AC at 150 Hz. and 90% penetration balance. For both alloys the welds were better than the previous methods used. I tried again DC and the welding sucked. I tried 140 and

130 Hz. frequency AC and the welding didn't go as well as using 150 Hz. I also tried different amounts of AC balance and the 90% worked best. I am really sold on square wave AC for some types of welding. When I get some more aluminum bronze filler wire I'll try welding the manganese bronze again to see if it will work better that silicon bronze filler. Eric
Reply to
etpm
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Jody made a video last week on TIG brazing that showed how cleaning action helped. You could see it in the arc shots. Pretty cool stuff. Nice to hear it worked well for you too.

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and you really should listen to the podcast Jody, Jonathan and Roy are making here:

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They are discussing really cool TIG stuff here and there...

Reply to
Leon Fisk

Eric,

Years ago I worked in a sheetmetal shop, at one point we were doing sheetmetal for a place that made high end consumer gas stoves. They decided to make some with a brass front panel, we had to TIG the corners. No attempt was made to select a proper filler rod, boss had us use standard brazing rod. Soon after getting a puddle, the zinc would start to fume out vigorously. Frankly I don't recall if I used AC or DC, but fairly sure it was AC. We had the Syncrowave 350, I ended up using the pulse feature. High heat just long enough to get a puddle and add some rod, then back off to let it cool. Still got some zinc fuming out, but it worked pretty darn good. Miller about that time did an article on the shop and I got an honorable mention for that.

If you have the pulse feature, give it a try.

Regards,

Jon

Reply to
Jon Anderson

Greetings Jon, I did try the pulse feature a little on AC. It seemed to help some. I have almost zero experience with using the pulse on either AC or DC. Maybe 5 minutes total. So I will practice to get some more pulse time under my belt on easy to weld stuff and try again welding high zinc alloys. I can see how pulsing would work. Thanks, Eric

Reply to
etpm

snipped-for-privacy@whidbey.com fired this volley in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Hmmm... I have a Syncrowave 300. I guess I'll have to try that! It never occurred to me. I just torch-braze.

Lloyd

Reply to
Lloyd E. Sponenburgh

I've done several small pieces of copper bar. That seemed almost more tricky than aluminum, the whole thing wanted to melt at the same time. But, I did get it welded. I might imagine brass is somewhat similar.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Elson

I've done some copper TIG welding. Found the best method was to put in way more heat that you'd think proper. Have to put heat in faster than than the copper can transfer it. I was welding up a copper range hood, nothing critical.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Anderson

Copper is easier in one respect in that it doesn't boil away. It's harder in another respect in that it takes way more heat. When I TIG welded large sections of copper I placed the copper bar on fire brick and built a heat dam around the bar with more fire brick. Then after heating with a rosebud covered most of it with even more fire brick, leaving only the area to be welded exposed. This is the only way I could weld the 1 inch thick bar with a 300 amp machine. Eric

Reply to
etpm

snipped-for-privacy@whidbey.com fired this volley in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

'Makes sense. The only copper I'd want to TIG is about 1/2" thick by 2" wide (and long). It'd take a huge amount of heat.

Lloyd

Reply to
Lloyd E. Sponenburgh

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