- Thread starter PSweeney
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It's 309L you want for stainless to mild steel, there are others but they're either less common or in the case of the other usual suspect 312 more spendy so kinda a waste of money unless you need it's properties. 308L or 316L are alloyed to match matching parent material, dilute them with mild steel (relatively high carbon and no chromium etc) and the result can be a brittle weld. 309L is 'over alloyed' to handle dilution with carbon steel. TechnicAl touched on the subject here http://www.mig-welding.co.uk/stainless.htm and metallurgists like him use things like Schaeffler diagrams to calculate/predict weld microstructures... http://www.bssa.org.uk/topics.php?article=121 and http://www.nhml.com/martensite-in-austenitic-stainless-steel-welds.cfm
premmington
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If I weld stainless to mild, I use 312 rods.
Richard.
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309 filler is the popular choice for most mild to stainless it's a good over alloying consumable therefor is ideal for dissimilar work.
312 is an excellent consumable if your looking for that high strength in the weld as it's dilution with the mild steel falls nicely in the safe ferrite zone. If your worried about cracking or strength this one is the one to go for but as said these are pricy rods and for most work the cost of them would not be justified.
312 is an excellent consumable if your looking for that high strength in the weld as it's dilution with the mild steel falls nicely in the safe ferrite zone. If your worried about cracking or strength this one is the one to go for but as said these are pricy rods and for most work the cost of them would not be justified.
premmington
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I always buy Elga Cromarod 312 (2.5mm and 3.5mm MMA)
3kg of 3.2mm x 350mm at £55.10 plus vat (rapid welding).
I own a car repair workshop. We use 312 rods for removing chrome plated locking wheel nuts, welding mild steel flexi exhaust pipes to stainless. Welding nuts to snapped studs.
Most of the motor trade seems to concentrate on MIG wire feeding A18 wire.
We do allot of AC and DC MMA welding for repair jobs. Most hub - bearing work is too magnetic to use DC due to arc blow.
With a 312 rod. You get no cracking when cooling and very high strength.
For fabrication work, 312 rods would be expensive. But for workshop problem solving they are the rod of choice!
3kg of 3.2mm x 350mm at £55.10 plus vat (rapid welding).
I own a car repair workshop. We use 312 rods for removing chrome plated locking wheel nuts, welding mild steel flexi exhaust pipes to stainless. Welding nuts to snapped studs.
Most of the motor trade seems to concentrate on MIG wire feeding A18 wire.
We do allot of AC and DC MMA welding for repair jobs. Most hub - bearing work is too magnetic to use DC due to arc blow.
With a 312 rod. You get no cracking when cooling and very high strength.
For fabrication work, 312 rods would be expensive. But for workshop problem solving they are the rod of choice!
premmington
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I was looking at what we buy for the workshop, welding filler wise earlier this year.
Annually we buy!
All the work we do is repair work! We don't do any fabrication!
2x 12kg of 0.6mm A18 MIG wire £88 + vat
1x 5kg box of 6013 3.2mm rods (Sif) £19 + vat
2x 3kg boxes of Elga Cromarod 312 3.2mm £110 + vat
1x 2.5kg box of Elga Cromarod 312 2.5mm £47 + vat
1x 2.5kg box of Lincoln RepTecCast 3 Nickel 2.5mm x 300mm £163 + vat
3x 1kg of 3.0mm TIG AZ61A Magnesium rods (Sif) £660 + vat
Total £1087 + vat
Plus gas, argon, argoshield lite, oxygen and propane. And a few torch consumables and gloves.
We use so few, TIG mild, alloy and stainless rods. I can't remember the last time we bought any. The half tubes we have lying about will last me out!
Price wise, the only thing that shocked me was the Mag TIG rods (plus how many pairs of leather gauntlets we get thru).
Anybody got a better alternative for TIG filler wire for broken sumps, gearboxes and castings?
I must admit, I always order from Rapid Welding. I have not shopped about for prices.
Mag wire is always 'kin spendy, been a good while since i've bought any but one of my localish places usually charges me around half of the 'suggested' retail price + VAT when they order some SIF #23 (AZ61) in for me. There's not that many other sources i'm aware of for mag wire, Magnesium Elektron are (or at least used to be) a LOT more expensive and IIRC have a 2kg min order and a few other speciality places who i wouldn't expect to be better value. Bizarrely despite being cheaper than a magnesium specialist for AZ61 SIF are WELL overpriced for Ti wire and i doubt they're actually drawing wire themselves either, especially Mg or Ti...
I know mag is becoming more and more popular for automotive castings but i still get through probably at least 20 times more 4043 than i do AZ61... rare/exotic stuff aside i've never seen a magnesium sump, i see a lot more ally gearboxes than i do mag ones and although there are quite a few mag rocker covers about people don't tend to break them, at least around my neck of the woods
Richard.
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I've repaired quite a few bike casings
5356 is the one I select for this work.
From my experience consumable selection is not as important for this as prep and cleaning.
I have come across a rare couple that are simply not repairable.
This is usually down to the oil that has been soaked into it over years and no amount of cleaning will help.
5356 is the one I select for this work.
From my experience consumable selection is not as important for this as prep and cleaning.
I have come across a rare couple that are simply not repairable.
This is usually down to the oil that has been soaked into it over years and no amount of cleaning will help.
premmington
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I would agree with this totally
premmington
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I know this is going to sound stupid...
But in our automotive repair workshop, we have several welders set up for different jobs.
For repair work, setting up time may take longer than the welding job.
This maybe why we go thru so many MMA rods instead of "re-feeding" Mig sets, and changing TIG sets from AC to DC (torch consumables).
Basically we have Mig set fed with 0.6mm A18 wire. AC Tig set up for alloy castings. Then we MMA weld everthing else.
I always get the feeling "stick welding" is history in the big wide world outside my workshop. Most of the lads who come to work for us, can only wire feed weld (car mechanics) and to be honest, there welding style mostly consisits of a row of Mig tack welds. Like using a "metal glue gun". They seem to want to produce a weld that has a rippled effect like a Tig weld bead. They all seem to pull a Mig weld bead towards them instead of pushing the weld pool away from them.
Maybe I am getting old, but for single one off jobs, the ease and choice of changing MMA rods to suit a job can't be beaten.
The direct heat and penatration required to build up a broken bolt for extraction cannot be achieved without proper weld pool control and not using the correct filler metal.
This week I welded up a crack in an expensive stainless 2010 BMW diesel exhaust. The lad who works for me removed it and kept bleating on about having to have a new exhaust to re-fit. I drilled a 4mm hole in each end of the crack, quickly abraded it with a flap wheel, ran half a 2.5mm MMA 312 rod over the crack, and made a nice little puddle over the ends with the other half of the rod. After a quick clean up of the slag with a rotary wire brush.
Most of the ex main dealer techs who come work for us, just can't weld to any standard!
What did please me thou the other day. Was when I caught our new Russian fitter making a drip tray, he folded the edges up on the sheet steel with a little lip and gas welding them together without using any filler rod. He had got the tray position angle just right, the lip of metal to be melted and fused just right. It looked like a work of art when completed.
A few weeks ago, I did some overhead stick welding in the workshop. Brackets on RSJ's for lighting. The Russian fitter helped me. He can MMA weld vertical up as well! What did supprise me was he had never used an auto-helmet. I gave him my old auto Jackson one as I have bought myself a new Optrel mask.
I have a feeling our new Russian fitter is going to be good at problem solving. It does please me to see someone repair or make something instead of the general trend of dealer trained technicians just wanting to bolt piles of expensive parts on customers cars.
MMA has it's place as do tig, mig and gas.
it dosent take meany moments to change the tungsten in a tig , to i tend to just swap torches now ( watercooled for ali air for steel )
mostly use the std A18 308 and 4043 but i bought a load of part boxes off here that come in ery usefull, 309, 316l , 309. A31, 5XXX ali , also aquired ages ago a lot of cast iron filler for gas welding that works well with the tig on iron repairs
mig wise one permantly stays on 1.0 mm A18 wire. the other decent mig has 312 wire in it permantly for stainless / dissimalar repairs
MMA welding 60% is probaly 6013's 30% ish be 7018's. but have a large cubard full of special rods, hardfaceing, nickel for repairing cast iron, various stainless steel, various rods for fancy steels, and the ali rods they are a bit intresting to use but save takeign the tig outside as some jobs wouldnt fit through the door and would flatten the bench if they did.
the one prosses that seems all but forgotten is GAS that can really get your **** out of some big holes espectaly when things are magnetic, and you can weld parts in situ on cars when it's just to much hasstel to remove them and you only have to worry about setting fire to it not nukeing the electronics
it dosent take meany moments to change the tungsten in a tig , to i tend to just swap torches now ( watercooled for ali air for steel )
mostly use the std A18 308 and 4043 but i bought a load of part boxes off here that come in ery usefull, 309, 316l , 309. A31, 5XXX ali , also aquired ages ago a lot of cast iron filler for gas welding that works well with the tig on iron repairs
mig wise one permantly stays on 1.0 mm A18 wire. the other decent mig has 312 wire in it permantly for stainless / dissimalar repairs
MMA welding 60% is probaly 6013's 30% ish be 7018's. but have a large cubard full of special rods, hardfaceing, nickel for repairing cast iron, various stainless steel, various rods for fancy steels, and the ali rods they are a bit intresting to use but save takeign the tig outside as some jobs wouldnt fit through the door and would flatten the bench if they did.
the one prosses that seems all but forgotten is GAS that can really get your **** out of some big holes espectaly when things are magnetic, and you can weld parts in situ on cars when it's just to much hasstel to remove them and you only have to worry about setting fire to it not nukeing the electronics
premmington
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Very valid point... it has been years since I have done any gas welding or brazing! We only stock big bottles of oxygen and propane now. (We do have one tiny porta pack set with acetylene, and it gets so little use I have thought about returning the bottles). I used to like gas welding! The last few things I gas welded up were some heavy steel air fittings.
1. I have never ever run a hardfacing rod or an iron powder rod (I am a car mechanic)
2. I have never had a go with ali MMA rods.
3. I weld allot of magnectic or semi magnectic things up, I always use AC and never have a problem with ARC-blow.
I do go drinking with a chap who works for a water board contractor. They still do allot of gas welding in the field. Apparantly metal becomes magnectic when subjected to long periods of running water passing over it. He even has a gaussmeter to measure the magnectic field before they start work. He reckons there are methods to overcome arc blow with wrapping welding leads in coils around pipes. But for a route weld that must not leak they still use gas. He is an interesting chap, proper tradesman.
ali rods will get you wound right up, but the sense of relief when you manage to weld the hole on in said castin up in situ makes up for it. you know the jobs where it would be really really easy on the bench but getting that casting off means takeing the engine/ transmition out and it's stuck somewhere you really don't want to be doing that.
magnetic stuff, each job i meet is diffrent some it's easy overcome others it'll cause havock
magnetic stuff, each job i meet is diffrent some it's easy overcome others it'll cause havock
