Im really new to welding. I have only been doing it for about 1 month. I got a crappy Lincoln Handy Core Flux Core Wire feed welder. I have been practicing on bunches of scrap steel to get better anyways, i came upon a load of aluminum and was wondering what would I need to use this machine to weld aluminum (if possible) I assume first off I need a spool of wire, but do they make an aluminum with a flux core? Or would I have to use gas somehow?
Thanks
Well, since no one else has answered yet, I'll chip in the little bit I know ...
You will need gas (argon) to run aluminum wire. I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I've never heard of a fluxcore aluminum wire. (OTOH, there are such things as aluminum stick electrodes, so maybe it's possible ... ??) Do you know if your machine is capable of being converted from fluxcore to MIG? And is there a teflon liner available for your machine? (You will need a teflon liner to run aluminum.)
Even if you can convert your machine, if you do some searching through the archives, you will see some differing opinions about how *well* you can run aluminum through a small MIG machine. The problem is that aluminum is soft, and therefore doesn't do very well being "pushed" through the cable; it tends to kink up and make "birdnests" inside your machine. For that reason, aluminum MIG usually uses either a spool gun (with the wire and the feed mechanism right at the gun) or a push-pull combination (wire at the machine; feed mechanism at the machine and at the gun). If you look at Ernie's reply earlier today to Gunner's post (Welding Stainless ...?), you'll see that your success may also depend on which aluminum wire you use.
I h> Im really new to welding. I have only been doing it for about 1
month. I got
Have one of these, no good for aluminum. No adapter for it.
Bert Newfoundland
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