Tig on Brass

[Hitch]

Had a job to make up a brass mat-well frame Friday.

Mitred corners, angle toe out, outside corner joints on the verticle corners.
3mm thick brass angle.

Nearest rod was Sif, copper silicone.
Welded pretty good for brass, not a massive amount of fizzing. and minimal white, i assume not much zinc in it.

I did find it hard to see when the pool is ready, seemed to form a layed over the pool, braking it up by putting a bit of rod in. Similar to ally, perhaps a bit worse to see whats going on. tried claening the weld are with scothbrite, but didn't make much difference.


Had Tig on DC, somewhere around the 80a mark.


I rarely do anything with brass, any tips for future reference?

 

[scott0031]

Hi Hitch,

I did have a good play with tigging brass some years ago now. Never really found it that successful welded ok but similar to the problems you mentioned above, i found it hard to make it really neat and tidy.


My personal preference for for any non ferrous such as brass, copper and guilding metal is silver solder all the way. Normally plenty strong enough for those material type applications. Very neat and tidy with tight joints and easy to clean up for a real professional looking job.


Kind regards,

Scott (ward eng)

 

[the snooper]

oxy acet & braze it

 

[busa]

oxy acet & braze it

Brazing brass can be a ball ache with the parent metal and filler melting at the same temp. We do a lot of copper and brass contacts and terminals for the local electricity board and silver solder them. Fit up has to be good but it's by far the easiest method, flux residue can be removed easily by pickling acid and cleaned up with scotchbrite afterwards. I'm with scott, silver solder every time.

 

[runnach]

I helped a mate of mine a while back, he got the the contract for metalwork from a shop fitters who were knocking up island units for Jenners store in Princes Street. 3mm brass sheet, various wonderful shapes and sizes, basically fancy edging to give units a nice looking finish.

Pretty much same matl behavior you experienced Hitch, not much of a puddle, more of a pasty type weld pool, similar to zinc dye cast. Although it was messy and fumey, job turned out very well, I cut very fine slithers from sheet for rod, this achieved a perfect match when weld was dressed, to the untrained eye, they would never know job was welded together.

Cheers..............

Ps, may have been 16swg matl?

 

[Hitch]

Good point runnach, didnt think about using the offcuts as filler.
The copper silicone looked a pretty close match. When dressed and the visible edge polished (120g) you couldnt tell. I suppose as it tarnishes it will become more visible.

 

[snowcat]

yep spot on to terry, use the offcuts for filler....... much the same experience welds seem functional but never nice, easy stuff to dress and polish mind....

 

[astro_al]

Is it worth trying on AC and playing with the balance to get more cleaning? Al.