Aluminum welding with Mig.

[spaffmonkey]

Hi all
My welder broke down last week so I had to buy another welder to do some urgent work.
Once my main welder is repaired I've been thinking of using the soon to be spare welder for welding aluminum.

Could any tell me what I would need to change on welder to make this possible.

Welder is a sip topmig 150

Cheers

 

[R33]

You would need ally rollers for the wire feed, these will have a U shape grove in them, instead of a V.

A teflon liner for the tourch , the tourch ideally no longer than 3 meteres. If you do lots of ally welding could be worth looking in to a spool gun. Also argon gas.

Thats the basics you need, although that is welder dependant.

 

[doubleboost]

This may help
Same set up for any mig

 

[spaffmonkey]

Brilliant cheers guys. I shall keep you posted of progress.

 

[optima21]

thanks Doubleboost, as informative as ever, you make that look fairly easy to do and at least I know what it should look like next time I attempt to do some proper mig welding of aluminium as Ive only been playing with bits of scrap so far.......

.....I only want to do one job and thats to weld up some triumph vitesse bumpers so they are one piece (front and rear) and ditch the over riders on my Triumph herald when I rebuild it. here a piccy pulled off the web to show where Im going.

 

[KemppiFrog]

Spaff, I tried ally with my 150amp Kemppi. Euro torch with metal liner and the normal wirefeed wheel, just changed the gas. No problems with wire feed, though I tended to avoid curving the torch lead too tightly. .8mm wire, would have prefered 1mm, but non locally.

 

[wyn]

How did the topmig work when welding steel?

I'd have thought with sip wire feed problems that using it with aluminium wire will turn into a total nightmare.

I bought a clarke 151 once with ideas about welding aluminium .......Big mistake.

 

[KemppiFrog]

Doubleboost, liked your vid. First I have heard about special tips for ally. Since I was using a fairly old one, the extra clearance would have been worn out of it.

 

[Mid Wales welder]

I would use 5356 wire too, as this will help with feeding.

 

[norlander]

thanks Doubleboost, as informative as ever, you make that look fairly easy to do and at least I know what it should look like next time I attempt to do some proper mig welding of aluminium

Yes, he does de-mystify Ali with MIG and give you the confidence to give it a go.Just after I bought an AC/DC TIG-the bleedin Geordie git.
The set up video one is brill, going to have to give it a go as I have a spare torch and I got Argon for the TIG.

 

[Rrunnach]

Just viewed both clips, clip two nailing 6mm Al/Al plate. Few errors there, at start of weld, tilt angle all wrong, hence missed edge at start of weld, where the narrator claims full pene.

One sure way to avoid errors with alloy welding, is to use run on, off plates. Of course this depends if working to a procedure.

Same procedure may require use of 4043 grade wire. Which can be done to a good standard with good machine setup, for even better 4043 results, spool and gun is the way to go, again, machine dependant.

With decades of alloy mig welding, I have never used anti spatter on alloy, nor have I had black soot as displayed within clip, black soot, represents too long an arc length, poor torch manipulation. But maybe excess soot is due to machine capability?

 

[norlander]

Just viewed both clips, clip two nailing 6mm Al/Al plate. Few errors there, at start of weld, tilt angle all wrong, hence missed edge at start of weld, where the narrator claims full pene.

One sure way to avoid errors with alloy welding, is to use run on, off plates. Of course this depends if working to a procedure.

Same procedure may require use of 4043 grade wire. Which can be done to a good standard with good machine setup, for even better 4043 results, spool and gun is the way to go, again, machine dependant.

With decades of alloy mig welding, I have never used anti spatter on alloy, nor have I had black soot as displayed within clip, black soot, represents too long an arc length, poor torch manipulation. But maybe excess soot is due to machine capability?

Yes OK, but the bloke aint a full time welder, he is a mechanic, I'm a biker/builder, I don't weld to codes- only my own code- which is do a test piece of the materials I'm gonna use, put it in the vice and belt it wi the biggest ammer int shop.
Us who build things in our sheds ,cannot always afford fancy stuff like spool guns, and we do not have spare material for run on/off plates.
He can weld good enough, and can sort out problems on Infernal Combustion Injuns-welding is just one of his skills-not his primary one.The machines he is demonstrating are budget kit-its real world, in ya shed, home brew welding, showing what can be done on kit that might be within the budget of us peasants who have to by our own welding gear.

 

[premmington]

Yes OK, but the bloke aint a full time welder, he is a mechanic, I'm a biker/builder, I don't weld to codes- only my own code- which is do a test piece of the materials I'm gonna use, put it in the vice and belt it wi the biggest ammer int shop.
Us who build things in our sheds ,cannot always afford fancy stuff like spool guns, and we do not have spare material for run on/off plates.
He can weld good enough, and can sort out problems on Infernal Combustion Injuns-welding is just one of his skills-not his primary one.The machines he is demonstrating are budget kit-its real world, in ya shed, home brew welding, showing what can be done on kit that might be within the budget of us peasants who have to by our own welding gear.

I am mechanic, not a full time welder.

I liked the video content!

I also very much agree with the comments from "norlander"

 

[Rrunnach]

I did say spool and gun, machine dependent. Also a machine with spool/gun capabilities are not very expensive taking 2nd hand route and, I was purely pointing out, with S&G you greatly reduce the problems of birds nesting, take note, I say reduce, S&G can birds nest too, less time lost re-feeding wire back to tip.

Re: run on/off plates, again, merely mentioning to the peasants how to avoid lack of pene at start up and, crater problems at end of run. As to your material stock, if you don't have it, then you can't use it..........simples!

R-Tech, yes low budget plant, I use a budget single phase Cebora, with S&G capability, where I get good clean welds all the time, down to technique and good machine setup, I don't bother too much about the cleaning malarky.

Re: the gent on clip trade, I have no idea what he does for a living, I purely mentioned missed edge on roo side due to poor tilt angle, surely this is something some would like to know??

I was going to apologise for for touching a nerve, feck it, cant be ersed :-)

 

[Monkey Harris]

as a side note ,
there is a guy in MK, on ebay with part rolls of professional wire for sale some of it ali

 

[spaffmonkey]

After getting a price for a replacement wire feed on my original old Clarke mig welder I have decided as my welding work is building up I'm going to buy a new one.
I have decided on a Jasic mig 250
Which I'm collecting tomorrow.
It's a inverter welder but can do Mig, Arc and scratch Tig and had a socket for spool gun. I will keep people posted on how I get on with it.

 

[spaffmonkey]

My new welder still in shop.

View media item 7991

 

[Rrunnach]

looks a nice piece of kit, mate!

 

[spaffmonkey]

Fingers crossed at it will keep the wife happy that I'll be selling my other welders and will just have one unit.

 

[spaffmonkey]

Comes with a 5 year guarantee which I thought was great.