Hi from a poor guy with new stuff

[firephoto]

Nice site here, shenion and Google both had a hand in leading me here and my recent departure of money left me with some good stuff.

So I've been welding when the need comes up for about 18 years I guess and finally decided to buy a new mig welder. Up until now I've mostly done stick welding unless I was using other peoples machines. I had a job once that had me welding aluminum brackets down for seat or tread planks in a college ball stadium but other than that I've just been welding on my own projects or for other peoples projects or mistakes.

Since I wanted to weld aluminum I narrowed down my choices to some machines with spoolguns and settled on a Lincoln powermig 180c. So far I like it and just need some more time on the trigger to get used to it and get more confident with the aluminum which lays down really fast.

Here's a pic of an old aluminum food equipment cart I picked up for $20 that I adapted for the welder and tanks and a fuzzy closeup of some welds. I did this with my old helmet so for right now I can blame that. I guess the new helmet is in the first pic too, it's an Optrel and works like a champ but I guess time will tell if it was worth the price but I like to keep things forever and buying cheap never seems to work out well for that.

 

[lexi]

Hi guy. Welcome! Let`s see the spool gun setup.

Alex

 

[malcolm]

I'm interested in the spool gun too. How do you find it to use? I'd worry about them being heavy and bulky but have never used one myself. They must help get rid of a lot of the aluminium wire feed problems.

What do you have planned - a lot of aluminium welding?

 

[firephoto]

The spoolgun is pretty simple, you have to unplug the regular gun and cable since it uses the same connection. Came with a wire harness kit that installs a switch inside to switch between the two modes.

It is kind of heavy but it's light compared to the higher priced ones and it's not too bad for moving around when laying a bead. It uses the same tips and nozzles as the normal gun so I thought that was a good feature and there isn't any adjustments except for the spool tension. It feeds the wire good but you have to keep it from burning back or else you get a tip with a piece of aluminum fused inside it. I'm pushing 4043 wire with it.

I do some repair and fabrication on fire trucks occasionally so there's a lot of aluminum there to be welded but in general I just like working with aluminum more than steel since it's a little easier to cut and stuff. It seems like whenever I make something out of steel it becomes too heavy duty like the garden cart for the lawn tractor that can probably haul a ton.

 

[shenion]

Those welds look good. Just wish Al did not have such a cold start. I may swap my tank for 75/25 Ar/He mix next time. Would be a universal MIG/TIG gas. It is supposed to help the Al flow better and get better penetration. Although yours look fairly flat. Mine tended to be real tall.

Good the gun uses standard tips. I have an old Airco spoolgun that uses 5" long tips Have no use for it and it is it too beaten up for any use.

That Lincoln looks real nice. Would have been my choice if I did not have this little Clarke.