welding cast iron

You're going to have a hard time doing aluminum with that machine. Unless you can out some sort of spool gun on it, or have a rediculously short lead made up, the aluminum wire will not feed reliably.

My Dad told me about when he was a little kid helping his Dad (who would be about 90 now) weld cast iron. This would have been in the '50's, I'd guess.

Grandpa would weld using his old DC motor-driven Hobart Bros generator and while the arc was going would feed soft copper wire into the puddle like we do when O/A welding.

My Dad, a 10-year old kid at the time had the chipping hammer and a welding hood and would follow him along peening the weld as it cooled.

He repaired lots of frozen engine blocks this way in the days before permanent anti-freeze became common. I've never heard of anyone else doing it though. I guess the copper in the weld would help make the weld metal more flexible?

I've heard a lot of people complain about using aluminum MIG wire without a spool-gun but many of them didn't realise that (at least around these parts) you can get aluminum that has a reasonable amount of magnesium in it. The result is a wire that's damned near as stiff as steel MIG wire. Using this stuff on a regular MIG setup I've

And, the welds seem to hold -- I've had no failures so far.

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Hmmm..got a part number or something? I'd like to try to get some to see what it does in my Mig unit. I tried the teflon liner with aluminum wire and it was a mess.

Thanks

Jamie

I'll have a look when I'm at the workshop this afternoon -- I know it's made in Italy (like much of the welding gear on sale here (NZ) these days)

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what about those oxy-acetyl torches that have nickel powder injection. i've seen that before. you V groove the joint, get the part almost cherry red, then fill with nickel powder.