Praticing aluminium TIG welding

[Jigantor]

Praticing TIG welding aluminium today.
Using
2.4mm white electrode,
2.4mm 5356 filler rod,
100% Argon at 7 litres per minute and
110 Amps.

On 3mm thick by 25mm wide aluminium extrusion.

Jigantor

[SundownIII]

100% Argon at 7 Litre's/min?????

You must own a gas supply company.

I'd check those flow rates again.

[kcstott]

Actually it not as much as you think
1 Liter/min= .0353 CFM
or 1 CFM =28.32 liters/min
so at 7 L/m is about .25 CFM no where near enough shielding gas

So if any thing he needs to increase his flow rate by a lot.

[Wicked one]

Praticing TIG welding aluminium today.
Using
2.4mm white electrode,
2.4mm 5356 filler rod,
100% Argon at 7 litres per minute and
110 Amps.

On 3mm thick by 25mm wide aluminium extrusion.

Jigantor

You need to clean your material way more and more diligently and you will get better results.

[SundownIII]

KC,

You are correct.

Not used to seeing flow in ltr/min, more used to CFH.

[full fusion]

Hey jigantor youl soon get the hang of it m8 it'l look like this before you know it


[IMG][/IMG]

i did these welds with an airowave 400 top bit of kit

[Jigantor]

Hi Fellow TIG welders,
I do not weld for a living.
I just purchased a TIG so I could weld aluminium parts for vintage motorcycles.
I only started praticing my TIG welds about two weeks ago and have had no instructions from anyone. The manual that came with the welder is pus and it is very difficult to find any info on how to for my application.

I went onto the Miller welding site and discovered their calculator.
This calculator states that for 3mm thick aluminium corner welds I should use,
17 cfh or 20 psi
1 cfm of gas does equal 28.3 litres per minute but the calculator suggests 17 cubic feet per hour. So if we do the sums we get the following result.
17 x 28.3 = 481 litres per hour
481 / 60 = 8 litres per minute.
My local Miller dealer suggested that I use 7 litres per minute and that seems to work fine.

I tested all these joints and they are very strong. The base metal bends before the weld cracks. That is all I am interested in at this time. I would like my welds to look cool too but that will come over time on the gun (torch).

Cool looking welds Full Fusion how thick is the material and how wide is your weld base. I am trying to get my corner welds to be only 6mm.

Jigantor

[Broccoli1]

Miller also has the Tig Handbook

http://www.millerwelds.com/resources/TIGhandbook/

[Jigantor]

Hi Broccoli1,
Thanks mate,
I will take a look and down load any relavent pages.

Ji

[Jigantor]

I love TIG welding,
it allows you to do so much.

The following images are of a Bultaco motorcycle engine head.
One cooling fin was broken off so we TIG welded it back on.
After the head was painted black you could not see the repair.

Ji