AL welding

just some post/info for us "newbies",

i have a 10" tablesaw and i needed to add a plexi screen (covers top of saw blade to protect user from getting hit with cuttings. so that when ripping metal or mica or wood, small particles dont come flying at my eyes. the plexi bolts to top of rip fence, but my fence had no place for the bolts.

the fence is is made from AL sheet approx. 0.050" thick, it's folded up to make a rectangular fence. i drilled two 1/2" holes in top of fence to accept

1/2" AL dowels. the tricky part was welding dowel to thin fence material.

i use white coded 1/16" tungsten, 0-80amps on foot pedal. started with cleaning setting at 5 on 1-10 knob (ESAB 161). i started low amps on dowel to get dowel hot, then tried to flow the dowel into thin fence. on 1st dowel i noticed that the dowel was flowing but would not easily flow connect into fence. i then placed the AC cleaning down to 3, no luck. i went to 9 of AC cleaning (this is more DCRP of the AC wave) and it flow connected rather nice. i never brought the TIG onto fence material, just let the dowel run onto the fence. i used 4043 filler slightly to help join to two materials.

last i ground weld flat with top of fence, the drilled & tapped them to accept bolts.

Reply to
Kryptoknight
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Just a quick thought: maybe that AL fence was anodized and should have been sanded clean?

Reply to
jerry_tig2003

not anodized, and very clean.

Reply to
Kryptoknight

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