Aluminium welding newbie

[yoshie]

Hi, a week ago I bought a SIP 160P from Mr Migwire from this very forum, I wanted to have a go at TIG welding especially welding aluminium, first I have to thank Mr Migwire the machine is great and he gave me enough consumables to get me started he even gave me some waste alu to practice on. Anyway, a week later I seem to be able to produce a weld that I'm not embarrassed to show in the forum, here are a few photos of my welds all comments appreciated....

The weld nearest was done without any filler that's why its low

One problem that I know I do have is starting and finishing the weld it always seem to burn away the last bit. OK, fire away I'm fairly thick skinned

Mike

 

[Richard.]

Mike the fillet in the 2nd pic is an excellent job. That joint is difficult at the best of times for beginners but with fixed frequency values it's even harder so you should be very pleased with that.
Surprised to see the easier butt joints don't look as good.
Ok great start but to help you progress further you need to keep your arc length shorter. I can see from the 3rd pic you've been melting the filler across the arc rather than dipping in the front of the pool. Get down closer and everything will narrow up for you making puddle control waaaaay easier.
Coming to the end of a butt joint is easy (if you have a foot pedal)
You don't so what I suggest is do it the old fashion way. Tack both ends. The end your going to run towards put a decent 1 inch long tack and run toward that. It will prevent you melting the end away as you won't be going right up to it. I suggest you grind your tungsten narrow (like a DC prep then put a small flat on the point for balling.) you have fixed frequency probably fixed quite low so any thing you can do to narrow the arc helps.

 

[Tinbasherdan]

Can't add anything as Richard beat me to it, but good work! You're definatley getting there and you have the general idea

 

[AndersK]

As the others said, a good start.
If you can adjust down slope increase it and release the trigger when getting closer to the edges. Current will fade down just as using a pedal.
Feeding a lot more rod at the stops will help too as it help to chill.

 

[Richard.]

I don't believe he has the luxury of down slope Anders on that unit. It's and old school SIP. (Much better than the new ones IMO) these were the type of units we learned on years ago. Very limited on settings but what they do do they do well.

 

[Richard.]

The trick with Alu is puddle control. Control the puddle and you can weld it.
Now gaining control of the puddle at the start of the joint is easy. Keeping control of it is where the practice comes in. Alu changes as you give it heat and it's not a gradual change. It becomes heat soaked in seconds. The modern way of dealing with this is variable current control from a foot pedal. (If the pool gets out of control you can lower the current). Is this case you don't have this so you need to use filler and travel speed to gain control and technique. If you cannot get from one end to the other you could do 2/3 one way then come back 1/3 into the end of the run. I love using a pedal and even though I have one it's not always possible to use it when the job isn't on the bench so you need to know these little tricks to weld Alu and keep the puddle firmly under control.

 

[yoshie]

Thanks everyone for all the feedback it's giving me a few things to try, it does have a down slope I have it set at 2 secs if I remember correctly (Mr Migwires recommendation). The machine does have a socket for a foot pedal its 4 pin socket like this...



I've had a look on the net and there doesn't appear to be any pedals with this fitting available, if anyone has an old one kicking about I'd be interested. I'll have a bit more practice and report back in a few weeks, thanks again for the input.

Regards

Mike

 

[Richard.]

Thanks everyone for all the feedback it's giving me a few things to try, it does have a down slope I have it set at 2 secs if I remember correctly (Mr Migwires recommendation). The machine does have a socket for a foot pedal its 4 pin socket like this...

View attachment 73185

I've had a look on the net and there doesn't appear to be any pedals with this fitting available, if anyone has an old one kicking about I'd be interested. I'll have a bit more practice and report back in a few weeks, thanks again for the input.

Regards

Mike

If you can find/source/make a pedal to fit that then you've just made life even easier for your self.

 

[Seadog]

Thanks everyone for all the feedback it's giving me a few things to try, it does have a down slope I have it set at 2 secs if I remember correctly (Mr Migwires recommendation). The machine does have a socket for a foot pedal its 4 pin socket like this...

View attachment 73185

I've had a look on the net and there doesn't appear to be any pedals with this fitting available, if anyone has an old one kicking about I'd be interested. I'll have a bit more practice and report back in a few weeks, thanks again for the input.

Regards

Mike

Mike, the socket is a 4-pin XLR which is used on audio equipment. I should be easy to find one and provided you can determine the connections fit it to a pedal.

Graham

 

[yoshie]

Thanks for the comments and help, the 4-pin XLR plugs are available on a well known auction site and I've managed to find wiring diagrams for my machine. What I need now is an old foot pedal to modify (don't want to buy a new one to start modifying) and someone to decipher the diagrams and tell me how to connect the plug to the pedal .

The socket for the pedal shows a 2.5K ohms label, does that mean I need a certain type of pedal or what should I be looking for?

All help gratefully received

Mike

 

[AndersK]

It means the resistance in the potentiometer in the pedal needs to be at 2,5 K ohm.

If you find a used pedal it is usually easy to replace the existing pot with one in the range you need.

 

[Ben88]

When I have no use of a peddle or down/up slope for corners I put pulse the arc manually and add a little extra rod. So to start on a corner I blip it a couple times realy fast so the heat builds up slowly(each blip get a little longer than the last blip, soon as both sides start to pool dip rod straight in about 2 coins worth an start welding from there. To finish a corner stop at last 10mm an blip last couple coins in an again add extra filler to the last coin slightly pushing rod into pool. It took me a while to get the hang of it.