JLP
Member
- Messages
- 253
- Location
- Beds - UK
So I've been welding Alu for a good few years and like to think I know a fair amount about it.
However I went to help out @stuvy yesterday on a classic car resto. Body panels are aluminium.
I prepped everywhere I needed to weld by grinding back the surface to bare aluminium, acetone, brush over and acetone again twice. This is my normal prep route for older alu. However when welding on both the old and brand new aluminium it would go through patches where it simply would not melt, remove the oxide layer or fuse in any combination of the three.
There were some parts where it wouldn't even strike the arc and would just flutter about as the starting current never coming to full power and striking the full arc.
Weirdly it did weld 100% perfect in some areas, but 1" into the weld would go to the above state and then 3" later go fine again for a few inches.
The other chap beating the panels also commented on how the material would randomly be soft in some areas and then immediately next to it be hard.
The poor weldability areas looked terrible and I genuinely felt bad taking money for them, but it was as good as I could get it, which I will say did have both sides of the joint fused eventually. There was just a continuous amount of black coming to the surface through the metal and I even tried to change the balance to 80% for a few passes and then back down and no change at all other than eating the tungsten.
I went through every trick I know of to try to get this to weld like it should and simply could not find any solution. Does anyone have any idea of what was going on, other than the material was poor quality or full of contaminants from years of sitting/paint or a release agent where the new parts were stamped?
However I went to help out @stuvy yesterday on a classic car resto. Body panels are aluminium.
I prepped everywhere I needed to weld by grinding back the surface to bare aluminium, acetone, brush over and acetone again twice. This is my normal prep route for older alu. However when welding on both the old and brand new aluminium it would go through patches where it simply would not melt, remove the oxide layer or fuse in any combination of the three.
There were some parts where it wouldn't even strike the arc and would just flutter about as the starting current never coming to full power and striking the full arc.
Weirdly it did weld 100% perfect in some areas, but 1" into the weld would go to the above state and then 3" later go fine again for a few inches.
The other chap beating the panels also commented on how the material would randomly be soft in some areas and then immediately next to it be hard.
The poor weldability areas looked terrible and I genuinely felt bad taking money for them, but it was as good as I could get it, which I will say did have both sides of the joint fused eventually. There was just a continuous amount of black coming to the surface through the metal and I even tried to change the balance to 80% for a few passes and then back down and no change at all other than eating the tungsten.
I went through every trick I know of to try to get this to weld like it should and simply could not find any solution. Does anyone have any idea of what was going on, other than the material was poor quality or full of contaminants from years of sitting/paint or a release agent where the new parts were stamped?