hey Jody here this video is brought to you by my online store at weldmonger.com
that's how I pay for these videos let's do it... in this video I'm gonna be
welding some 11 gauge 6061-t6 aluminum I'm gonna make a cube I will show
standard dip and pause techniques along with some pulse settings for running
right over the wire using the lay wire technique on an outside corner I'm using
my crummy fixture plate here it's a little bit overkill for just tacking up
a cube but since I've got it I'm gonna use it I filed the edges off these two
corners right here to leave a vent hole I'm using 1/16 filler for the tack welds
I like to have my tack wells a little smaller than the final weld always good
practice so you can't tell where the tack welds are when you're done good
practice also is to wipe them down I'm using some acetone here they can look
clean they're not clean they've got wire drawing lubricants and whatnot on them
makes a difference I started off using a tapered electrode for the tack welds
that gives you a better arc start for low amperage arc starts on aluminum and
it'll round a little bit more as I go and as I get on up to welding amperage
which is going to be around 130 amps somewhere between 130 and 140 probably
I'll set the machine to 140 and I'll just use the foot pedal normally I'd
probably just tack this by hand holding it with one hand tacking with another
but the fixture plate does make things super easy once I get two pieces tacked
up I'll put them together line them up as square as I as I can get
them with very few tacks that I can bump it around or massage it if there if there's
any gaps I can get them out of there here's a close-up of the tack weld and
the arc start with that tapered electrode that lights up pretty crisp it
still wants to wander just a little bit but I get a few dabs in there taper off
as I swirl to not leave a crater hole so what I'm going to really want is some
tacks on the corners but then also maybe a small tack end board an inch or so so
that when I light up on the corner tack if there's any stress on on everything
it won't pop loose and leave a gap you can see I've got a tiny gap there but I
can bump this thing with a mallet and get rid of most of those small ones
and there's my vent hole that I left just by following the corners I will zap
that really quickly at the end when everything's cooled off well let's talk
a little bit about propping this little steel cube here I made a good a good
while ago in a video I made it because I knew I would use it for a prop on things
like this comes in super handy you can just use a 4 by 4 wood block or
something like that I just was making a video of a cube so I decided to keep it
on hand for a prop in fact I will do the same thing with this aluminum cube I'll
just keep it on the top of my toolbox and it'll be a prop whenever I need that
particular height place to prop my hand so just moving along here nothing not
trying to to win any races or anything or as far as speed goes but about an
eighth of an inch per second you know I'm dabbing it's trying to dab
the same amount of wire every second you can see this is my pretty much my go-to
wire feed technique that's something you really got to practice to get good at
welding aluminum you got to get that filler rod hand up to speed because you
feed so much more aluminum than you would steal it just goes into the puddle
like butter and so it really helps if you get your wire feeder hand trained to
not be the weak link these are actually a whole lot of fun to do if you enjoy
welding at all there's nothing more enjoyable than a aluminum outside corner
joint and there's a lot of them on a cube like this so it's a really good
practice exercise in fact I'm gonna be doing more of these just on my own in
2020 just to swap hands get my left hand up to speed better things like that I
don't know if I'll show all of them but if they turn out good I'll bring you
along if there's something to talk about something to learn we'll do it something
that occurs to me right here is because I'm welding an aluminum cube on an
aluminum fixture plate if you don't weld on the aluminum surface a lot of times
you'll get arc marks on your aluminum part especially if you weld on a carbon
steel table especially if you weld on a carbon steel table with hot rolled mill
scale on it or whatever but you know you can you can you can eliminate that
possibility by a direct ground a third hand you know
providing the ground or things like that but just another another plus on this
aluminum fixture plate for welding aluminum parts
in just a few minutes got one of these joints it's got a little gap on it so
that's what we'll show some pulse settings and using a slightly different
technique were just run over the rod I mentioned earlier that I was adding rod
about once a second and trying to move the torch ahead about an eighth of an
inch per second and so it's interesting this is a six inch cube and I'm able to
time things here as I edit this video so six inches took me 41 seconds the exact
number would be 48 seconds so I went just a little bit faster than that and
that's just a rule of thumb just something to establish some consistency
there are times and you can go a lot faster there are times when you need to
go a little bit slower here I'm tapering off on the very end a little extra rod
as I taper off to avoid that crater I'm gonna speed it up by about 4x here
in just a second because this this next joint looks just like all the rest of
the joints and then we'll get to the some different techniques and also those
pulse settings for running over the wire again a very fun little project I wish I
could do these for a living you know that's the thing about production
welding to is just it's a two-edged sword it allows you to get really good
and really fine-tune weld but it gets boring after a little while if you're
doing hundreds and hundreds of the same exact thing all right I'm going to show
now this is a flex head torch so this is a benefit of having a flex head torch I
can I can get the angle that I want and I'm also going to be using my tick
finger is a little glide here just to show if you need to do that on a if
you're welding on a boat or something where you can't turn the part around
sometimes you have to get weird angles having a flex head torch is kind of cool
too for that because you can get the optimum angle so I'm just going to glide
along here and well the joint just like I have been before if just a little bit
different method of propping instead of propping on that little steel block I'm
just going to do the little slide and glide here usually there's something you
can figure out some way to prop on something but sometimes it's difficult
especially on aluminum when it gets so hot so it's just nice to have the prop
in your pocket and it's also nice when it slides along nice and smoothly along
a smooth aluminum surface like this I pay attention here one dip per eighth
of an inch and I'm trying to travel about an eighth of an inch between dips
to again that's just a rule of thumb but it sure does give you some consistency
if you really kind of pay attention to that and try to try to maintain it as as
hot as aluminum gets can you imagine how hot your your knuckles would be if you
were propping your glove this close to the weld sliding along wouldn't work out
very well I remember getting an email from a guy
one time whose wife's body Matea he welded aluminum fuel tanks and he was
always burning his knuckles hanging in there too long trying to make the weld
good as good as he could and that's that's what we welders do we hang in
suffer a little pain on the knuckles and in order to make a good weld and first
day after using that thing his wife said he had a huge smile on his face when he
came home from work so that made me happy all right we're going back to
propping on the little steel prop block here I did get a few more arc shots that
I want to share with you here because I think they're pretty good thanks to the
clear number eight Pro Cup there helps a whole lot in my filming so that you and
I both can see everything it lights up the way a lot too for me with my you
know my eyes that aren't quite as good as they used to be all right getting
toward the end show one more little ending here of tapering off nice
close-up of tapering off the arc as I add a little just a little extra rod
swirl around to avoid that crater hole well there's a little bit of a gap no
not I could easily weld that without using any special techniques it's not a
it's not a big gap but it just thought it would be a good opportunity to show
another technique of just running over the wire when you have a small gap so I
was using a hundred and 40 amps and using the foot pedal without pulse these
are my settings balance on sixty-seven frequency 100 Hertz that's a good
all-around setting for this thickness but with using pulse I had to go up to
180 amps one and a half pulses a second 33 percent peak time and 33 percent
background worked out not too shabby again you got to use you got to use more
amperage when you use pulse in most situations especially on
aluminum I'm going up to a 1/8 diameter 3.2 millimeter 4943 rod just because
that's the only thing I had 1/8 ... 4943 is very similar to 4043 in the way it
welds but its got slightly different properties I kind of like it a little bit better
than 4043 I think it wets out nice has a better overall appearance so here I'm
just walking over the rod you know trying to move along at a fairly steady
clip sliding along with that tag finger you can see me looking through the cup
huge benefit on certain areas like when you're welding down in a corner where
you can actually see through the cup and feed wire and see what you're doing not
necessary completely on a outside corner like this again it just helps me with
filming so that we all can see everything I got a little bit tighter
ripples on that using the pulse but it was kind of fun not something I would do
all the time just fun time to experiment when you're doing a cube like this time
to try things and again I'm gonna be doing some of these where I'm swapping
hands doing left handed and using different sized cups and different
settings high frequency low frequency will see what what the outcome is might
even use some different different gases on them and and see what works better
I'm getting close to the end of this cube here where all the welds are pretty
much done and that's that's where that that vent hole that I left in there to
begin with is helping otherwise if you've ever done this before we use seal
something up gasses expand inside and it'll just blow the weld out and you got
a mess so sometimes you can drill a hole and that's a good idea and what you want
to do is just leave your hole somewhere that's easy to get to then once I let it
cool I'll just zap it and pack right in there really quick and see you up the
hole I wasn't able to capture that on an arc shot but I think that's the corner
right there that I zapped but without that vent hole you've had a bad day well
that was a super super fun project I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did
filming it for you these are the TIG gloves that I added to my store some
time ago they're really nice soft and still durable of course
this is the 8 Pro Cup that I used in this video it's a good all-around cup
for not just aluminum but steel and aluminum and I've done several videos
showing it and again one of the biggest reasons that I use it is because it
really helps me film a better video where everybody can see everything
including me a lot better than if I used a pink cup here's another shot of a
little aluminum project I did looking through that Cup but you can learn more
about the cup my tick fingers the gloves that I have and lots of other products
that I've tried out and recommend and have used in videos it's all at weld
manga comm you can see here I've got a little bundle of the Furyk 8 cup 4 pack
as well as a tick finger you can save a little money there and also you saw me
using a 17 air-cooled torch in this video and the furyk 8 clear cup works
great on that torch but it does require an adapter kit but there's plenty of
little infographics on my store to let you know what size torch you have and
whether or not you need an adapter kit in order to use a 8 clear cup
hope you enjoyed this video if you're interested in any of this stuff go check
it out at weldmonger dot com