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Why does my AL welding suck

I'm trying to weld some thin AL together and am having trouble.

I have 0.050 sheet, that is cut to go over the end of a 8" 0.065 wall pipe. The first one I did welded very nicely and I had high hopes for this project. Second and third have appeared to have seagulls in the garage crappin' all over them.

1/16 2% Lanthanated tungsten, both sharpened and not 1/16 4043 filler 80-ish amps TA185TSW 100% Ar I think both pieces are 6063, but the sheet could be 6061.

The only thing I can think is on the first one I cut out the sheet mostly with hand shears, and the rest have been cut with a fiber cut-off disc. I brush with a stainless brush till both pieces are clean and shiny though.

When I get a shiny puddle I go to put filler in to get it running and the filler blobs up and has all kinds of oxides on it, mainly. It's also very hard to get these to flow together at all.

I have been reasonably sucessfull with both fusion and filler welding in position, but mainly with a little thicker material.

I am going to try to use a piece of 3/16 sheet tonight, cut with a bandsaw and see if that's any different.

Thanks, Rod

Reply to
rod richeson
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The only thing I can say is that I got a lot better at Al welding when I learned to create the puddle by melting a bit of rod to start, not by trying to get a puddle going from the base metal. This seems to get the fusion of the two work pieces happening. Then I add filler metal to the puddle that is mostly filler metal already, if you get my drift.

Brian

Reply to
Brian

First you can't fusion weld 6061 or 6063. You need new metal in the weld. A fusion weld will likely crack.

The fibre wheel is likely embedding particles in the edge of the aluminum. Go back to shearing the disks.

I would likely go to a 3/32" tungsten, ground to a point, and then have a smaller ball formed on it for control.

Outside fillet welds are tricky if your gas gets flowing the wrong way on the corner, so make sure there are no drafts blowing your gas away.

Standard collet body would need about 25 CFH of Argon, and a Gas lens around 12 CFH.

Reply to
Ernie Leimkuhler

Reply to
Guy Morin

I am just learning to weld with the same machine. For some reason my machine defaulted to 20% positive and 80% negative (very high penetration and very low cleaning). To start make sure your balance is set at 50%. It made a big difference in my aluminum welding.

Bill

Reply to
meincer

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