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Anti spatter mask

Not spray, that is what I have been using. Works great, but takes way too much time and effort to remove before painting. Since these are very simple and identical weldments I thought of making a physical 'mask' to drop over the parts before welding. Consistency of weld spacing might be a happy side effect...

Mainly looking for material suggestions here. Tried Googling a bit with no luck, so even a search string hint would be a big help. Obviously steel is out since I'm not good enough to never accidentally weld the mask to the work:-(

1/8" galvanized with a very small wire feed in flux core mode. Thought of switching it to MIG, but that might be pushing the limit on this rig. Plus the early samples I ran on a full sized MIG spattered as bad or worse than the flux core.
Reply to
William Bagwell
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Copper

Reply to
RoyJ

Ouch!

Will look at possibility of a mostly steel mask with copper inserts surrounding just the four weld areas... Thanks!

Reply to
William Bagwell

I wonder if you could glue scrap PCB strips or copper slug tape around your steel mask?

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--Winston

Reply to
Winston

both spatter and weld do not stick to the copper plus it pulls the heat away from the area, keeps everything cooler. Any sheet will work but steel sheet will pick up the spatter and hold it, aluminum gets ratty pretty quickly. Avoid galvanized stock, sooner or later you will get the zinc hot enough to fume off.

Reply to
RoyJ

You could also try engine gasket material. You can buy sheets of it at auto parts stores. Pretty non-flammable.

Reply to
Ernie Leimkuhler

The fact that MIG (i.e., plain wire & gas) spatters as much as flux core makes me wonder if it's the galvanizing that's causing the spatters. Galvanized does NOT like to be welded: the zinc boils off and crapizes the weld.

Bob

Reply to
Bob Engelhardt

Yeah, that's sure the opposite of what I experienced on plain old A36.

Pete Keillor

Reply to
Pete Keillor

The gas used for mig welding makes a difference in how much spatter occurs. CO2 is cheap ,but causes more spatter.

For galvanized steel silicon bronze brazing might be a better choice.

=20 Dan

Reply to
dcaster

Thanks! Now I have two options. Had already started gathering material for the steel / copper mask. This will give me a quick way to test if it will even work and a fall back plan...

Reply to
William Bagwell

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