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Aluminum Welding Spool gun or Tig??

Bacho said:
I’ve never gotten to mess with a spool gun. I did discover on my tig that too high a flow of gas can be a bad thing

How clean is that aluminum? I generally hit it pretty good with a powered scotch bright pad and then clean with non-chlorinated brake cleaner. Even if the aluminum is new and visually cleaned to the eye.
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I wiped it down with acetone, that is all the cleaning I did, but it is cheap low grade soft aluminum, which is what's on my trailer.
Also why I wonder if the 4043 wire will make a big difference.

My gas I started out at 7 cfm, same results. Tried two or three settings along the way up to 25cfm. Could be the problem still.
 
Looking at my notes, last time I welded aluminum I was running .030 5356. 21.8v reverse polarity. Wire speed 380IPM, 14L/min argon (about 30 CFM). I was primarily pushing, and weaving a lot more than I would for steel.

That was all 1/8 and 1/4 6061 for my truck bed.

I cleaned most of it with acetone and scotchbrite.
 
reptillikus said:
Looking at my notes, last time I welded aluminum I was running .030 5356. 21.8v reverse polarity. Wire speed 380IPM, 14L/min argon (about 30 CFM). I was primarily pushing, and weaving a lot more than I would for steel.

That was all 1/8 and 1/4 6061 for my truck bed.

I cleaned most of it with acetone and scotchbrite.
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Yep, that sounds right, I am right in that range. Been on it, over it, under it. LOL

I haven't wire welded aluminum in over 30 years but I haven't forgotten that much.

I cannot push. I have to drag and I know that is not right. If I push it just piles up until it burns through.

Don't know. try a couple more times then maybe time to buy a more modern welder.
 
This is on the 3/16 aluminum. It is very cold.

But I cannot chisel it off.

I can get strength and penetration, but you can't tell which ones have penetration and which ones will chip right off by looking at them.

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Your material strikes me as quite dirty. Aluminum has a layer of oxide over it that you need to be busting through. I would try removing that oxide with a scotch bright wheel and then immediately welding and see what you end up with.
 
Just found this on the miller site.

Why would it say 4043 only? How would the machine know? Why did they say that?
Curious.

Spoolmate™ 100 Spool Gun 300371Direct-connect spool gun handles.030–.035 inch (0.8–0.9 mm)aluminum (4043 only)and .023–.035 inch (0.6–0.9 mm) steel/stainless steel wires. Ratedat 135 amps, 30 percent duty cycle. Includes12-foot (3.7 m) cable assembly and customcarrying case.
 
Bacho said:
Your material strikes me as quite dirty. Aluminum has a layer of oxide over it that you need to be busting through. I would try removing that oxide with a scotch bright wheel and then immediately welding and see what you end up with.
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It certainly was by the time I was done screwing around.

Going to start over with a fresh cleaning when I get back to it.
 
Tiha said:
Got all my stuff and it is not going well.

New liner installed just fine. It feeds the wire great, 8ft lead, I expected more problems.

100% argon, Flow is up to like 25cfm just to eliminate that being a cause of trouble.

.030 wire

Reverse polarity

This is 1/8 aluminum, band new, clean. I tried some 3/16 as well.

Screwed around as much as I could with heat and wire speed.

Still not right.

Going to grab some different wire. I had to buy 5356, I wanted 4043 but they were out of small spools.

It starts out cold, okay that is normal, but then goes right to burning through. I cannot turn my welder down any farther.

got all these ideas running around my head, like wrong wire, or gas flow, I hear the gas flowing but am I running out of gas? that would cause burn through.

Figured I would go buy a welder and spool gun if this didn't work, but I don't think it is my welder. I have enough heat and wire speed adjustment.

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You can't turn wire speed down or heat?

Are you going fast or trying to weave it in?
 
CarterKraft said:
You can't turn wire speed down or heat?

Are you going fast or trying to weave it in?
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I cannot turn my heat down anymore.
I cannot turn my wire speed down any farther. It is burning back. Won't keep an arc.

Did both, every bead I have tried to run has been a weave at different speeds.

Start out slow because it is cold, metal is cold, everything is cold.

Then it goes from cold to burn through. No in between.

In my mind it should start out with a cold blob on the end and then turn into a decent bead.
 
My experiences with mig / spool gun alum is it always starts cold then gets good and may overheat if continue.

Clean the test piece with something other than chemicals. I fresh flap disc will do.
Preheat the piece with a torch then practice. Alum is a heat sink and will pull all the heat away. Take a bit to get used to.
 
Stainless wire brush is the best way to clean aluminum. I bought some stainless wire wheels for a drill.

Try preheating the aluminum.

Does I seem like the wire is feeding evenly while welding? If it is surging while welding, it's not gonna work.

I don't weave with aluminum I go in a straight line, pausing to give it the stacked dime look. It seems to penetrate better, while making bit look nicer.

I have only used a spool gun.
 
Benny said:
Stainless wire brush is the best way to clean aluminum. I bought some stainless wire wheels for a drill.

Try preheating the aluminum.

Does I seem like the wire is feeding evenly while welding? If it is surging while welding, it's not gonna work.

I don't weave with aluminum I go in a straight line, pausing to give it the stacked dime look. It seems to penetrate better, while making bit look nicer.

I have only used a spool gun.
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The wire if feeding perfectly.

Been reading on 4043 wire, watching some videos. In the videos they say, if you have problems feeding move over to 5356 wire.

So feeding what I have now, vs the 4043 I am putting in who knows.

I use the term weave, but honestly it is more like circles.

It will be interesting, can't wait to get home and play some more now that I have some new things to try.

I am also running a bead on a flat strip. Maybe i should be playing with a corner filet first. But I will have to butt weld some pieces together eventually on this project.

Can try to preheat, but seems like the band between cold and burn through is way too narrow.
 
Turn your flow rate up. That should delay the burn through a little. A T weld will have a lot more surface area and not burn through as easily. I've done spool gun and Teflon liner on my little mig, the spool gun seemed to weld better, but it was on a bigger power source so who knows.
 
Well it wasn't better, maybe worse with new wire.

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Kept cranking the gas.

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Regulatory maxed out but I am getting close.

Going to buy new regulator and hose next.
After that I will need to check gas valve on my machine?

I hear gas, it starts out with a big puff when you pull the trigger but flow slows down after that.
Needle on the regulator moves when you pull the trigger but only a couple cfm. It should be flowing over 30 easily, but that is what it took to get this result.

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From what I remember of using a spool gun, what you have in the last pic isn't far off from about as good as you're going to get from it.

Truth is, spool guns suck. Just like stick welding alum sucks. Kind of have to think of the spool gun like running spray arc. You're just shooting molten alum at the piece. It doesn't run like regular short arc.

If you're expecting sweet looking MIG alum beads, that's done with a specific machine and a push/pull gun. Totally different setup and runs around 15k-20k.

Last pic looks like you had the base metal cleaned good, but the weld still looks a bit dirty. I would get a real flow meter and give that a try. The gauge you posted the pic of isn't a flow meter. The regulator it's connected to is just a standard regulator. Even though the gauge reads in CFH, it's still working directly off of pressure and, that's not how flow meters work. I've honestly never seen a gauge like that before.

Your description of what the gas sounds like coming out of the gun, is exactly what it would sound like if you were using a std regulator and not a flow meter. There is no poof and tapering off with a flow meter.

This is what you want.

victor-hrf2400-pro-regulator-0781-3656-1.jpg
 
I tried aluminum with a mig and gave up. Got a tig and aside from the fact that I'm too fucking uncoordinated to feed the filler through my hand like most people can, I can lay down nice welds...about an inch and a half at a time lol.

For what you're doing though...those joints aren't gonna have shit for strength I don't think no matter how they're welded. You'd be better off with a couple pieces of extruded angle, screws or rivets, and epoxy (not home depot epoxy...something like panelbond)
 
Tiha said:
Well it wasn't better, maybe worse with new wire.

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Kept cranking the gas.

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Regulatory maxed out but I am getting close.

Going to buy new regulator and hose next.
After that I will need to check gas valve on my machine?

I hear gas, it starts out with a big puff when you pull the trigger but flow slows down after that.
Needle on the regulator moves when you pull the trigger but only a couple cfm. It should be flowing over 30 easily, but that is what it took to get this result.

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Those last ones are perfect (for mig).
 
It's not popular but I just had my last Victor Flow meter fail (gone through 4 old ones recently) and I've had trouble getting parts for them so I bought this chinesium unit as a temporary.

For $22 it seems bad ass, very stout not chincy at all.

Yeswelder Argon/CO2 Mig Tig Flow Meter Gas Regulator Gauge Welding Weld https://a.co/d/hrIJKVr
 
My experience is only with a spool gun. We tried running it through the normal gun at first but constantly had problems.

As others have said, cleanliness is priority. I use grinding wheels made for aluminum and hit everything, even if it's fresh material. Any wheel/brush that has been used on steel will contaminate the aluminum.

Pushing is the correct way to go. The bead needs the gas coverage otherwise you get the type of blobs you are getting.

The comment about basically spraying metal is spot on from what I've found. Once I figured that out it got easier for me.

Old crappy picture I had on my phone. Not saying they are perfect, but nothings fallen off/cracked that I've done yet either.

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Like mentioned, definitely need to be pushing, not pulling. As far as cleaning, doesn't have to be an abrasive made 'for aluminum' - just any old flap wheel would be fine. Definitely don't use a flap disc that's been used on steel, although I'm not sure that would even matter for the weld quality - if it's been used on carbon steel it'll embed particles in the aluminum that will rust later. For practice welds, I honestly wouldn't worry about using brakleen or denatured alcohol - just get that oxide layer off and get after it. For spray transfer, your gas nozzle/stinger is going to be further away from the work - if it's too close you'll have burnback issues and be having to replace the contact tips often (or just sand the end off it repeatedly to save on replacing tips)

Oxide layer - I'd say overdo it with a flap disc to make sure it's good and gone and get your setup dialed in. If you're heating a piece of aluminum flat bar up with a torch, the oxide layer will hold up under the heat a lot better than the rest of the aluminum underneath - the core of the piece will become molten and the oxide layer will make it look like nothing's happening, then all of a sudden you'll burn through the oxide layer and it'll all drop on the ground like a big molten blob. So trying to weld through it - same idea

Your last pic of practice welds look cold to me, honestly. Crank the heat and see what happens - you can always dial it back. As long as it's not super thick, you should see the aluminum look 'bubbly' on the opposite side of the piece from where your weld is. If you don't see anything, probably way too cold. Aluminum conducts heat something like 6x as efficiently as carbon steel, so all of your heat is constantly wicking away - like trying to weld a heat sink. That is why welding aluminum requires so much more in the amperage department - have to maintain enough heat to keep a puddle going while all the heat is wicking away so quickly. As opposed to welding stainless, where you can get away with a lot less amperage - all your heat is staying concentrated right there where your puddle is...

I have some weld notes I wrote down when I started using a spoolgun - if I don't forget about it when I'm around the welder next, I'll take a pic tomorrow or Monday and post in case there's anything in there that's helpful:beer:
 
all the settings should be on line
if you have a main brand blue or red machine , the setting will be out there
half of the time if you flip the cover open there is a graph there to get you really close

unfortunately this is a operator issue
blasting your argon and making up new settings is just going to add to the frustration

clean clean clean, set it by the book (including polarity) and learn to run the puddle

remember aluminum doesn't act like steel, it doesn't change color, it oxides quickly, (as in by the time you finish cleaning it, it is starting again) and the oxide layer melts at approximately twice what the center (non affected) will. Aluminum also conducts heat at am alarming rate until the whole part heats up, then it turns into solder puddles in your boots. :grinpimp: and does so without the curtesy of any color change to let you know it is about to happen

has anyone mentioned clean?
 
I think its to cold, with AL you want to be spraying I run my little Lincoln 180 nearly wide open on 1/8" and once the puddle starts your moving fast. I run the same argon gas flow as with mix on steel.
 
It looks like the wrong gas is being used. Awhile back, I got a new argon tank and when I hooked it up, my welds looked like yours. Turned out that Praxair filled the argon bottle with CO2 .... It took me awhile to figure that out.
 
sicumminsde said:
It looks like the wrong gas is being used. Awhile back, I got a new argon tank and when I hooked it up, my welds looked like yours. Turned out that Praxair filled the argon bottle with CO2 .... It took me awhile to figure that out.
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Pretty sure it is a bad regulator. It is over 30 years old.

Got new flow meter style but connection takes a special hose that I can't find anywhere on the weekend. Will pick one tomorrow.

But it is 100% argon. I've seen guys get by with 95%

My steel blend i think is 80.

Anyway going to try to figure out my gas flow.

Pretty sure that will clean the weld up
 
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