Hi Henry, the one I posted above that has the bad porosity was done in overhead position, I am still however putting it down to wire or possibly gas rather than position as I did another at the same time with the EWM and Esab wire and it came out good, well my position of the torch wasn't the best on one run but otherwise ok, see pic, possibly a speckle or two in them. .
I think looking at your bead profiles Hood you weld quite hot but there’s a lot of reinforcement so perhaps your keeping the aluminium in the cooling phase where hydrogen can escape for longer hence the lack of porosity.
Because I am on a tight budget, and only have a smallish machine, Clarke 120 from memory, and weld mainly light stuff and cars etc., I use the cheapest 0.6mm wire on the big rolls. I have tried 0.8 but got better results with the 0.6. I have tried welding alloy with this machine but got poor results mainly because of what I was trying to repair, a cracked alloy sump, and probably the wrong gas, the very small bottle that only seemed to last 10 mins. I am very pleased with the Clarke machine which is great for car steel and light stuff. I will one day set up for alloy welding when money allows.
I would certainly agree with that as I do like to weld Alu hot when compared to others that I know. Whether that is good or bad I don't know but I can say it is very rare that I have to repair my own Alu welds.
Well aluminium likes a bit of heat the only danger is the loss of yield strength in the haz which can be much larger with excessive heat input.
In an ideal world leg should be pretty close to material gage If not you should travel faster really. Distances A and B should be fairly similar until you get down to gages like 2mm or smaller where the process simply doesn’t allow you to get a leg that small. The other side is very good and more even
You can’t see the full extent of the HAZ on aluminium with a macro etch afaik. Aluminium isn’t like steels where you get defined phase changes in the HAZ. In steel you get the wrought structure in the weld, the coarse grain in the immediate HAZ, small band of martensite and then back to the refined grain structure of the parent steel. In aluminium because of the cooling rate you don’t see such definition.
Well ideally no but it can happen and does if the cooling rate is too fast. A Very thin band of martensite.
Oh yeah, mild steel will be fine, I’m thinking more in the realm of high strength and low alloy steels.
i think theyve realised just how awful the super 6 wire was, theres half a roll left on my machine,im scrapping it.
One that used at a previous job, was an Esab wire. Silicon coated rather than copper, and ot ran superbly in spray transfer, hardly any popping, tips would last ages before being too worn, and gave a real smooth bead shape. Im sure it was number 12.50, or 12.51. As far as flux core goes, the only two ive tried wer both murex, 1.2mm. One was B55 basic wire, the other was RX56 which i think was a rutile cored wired. The Rx56 was brilliant positionally, lovely amd smooth, same settings in most positions if i remember rightly. The B55 not as nice positionally but not such a heavy slag layer.
Yes Aristorod 12.50. Was our premium wire. We now have Purus but that lends itself to mechanisation. The 12.50 is an awesome wire. On a pulse machine it runs beautifully. As you say it uses a proprietary surface lubricant rather than copper coating so you get less fume and a very stable arc. Also made to a tighter specification that 12.51 which is a run of the mill G3Si1 (SG2 under old standards) aristorod 12.63 is G4Si1 (SG3)
