hey therewell.com world my name is Matt Schwartz and I'm the welding
geek and today we're going to get into aluminum gas welding so if
you want to see how I go about doing that stay tuned to the video [Music]
all right we're gonna start from the beginning here the most important part is the welding
torch now I've just recently got a set of these blue feather torches that are beautiful super
well made these have a unique mixing chamber that makes a super clean nice welding tip we
feather in a beautiful flame which I'll show you here in a minute this guy has made this torch to
weld everything from jewelry all the way up to your bigger thicker jobs they have Micro tips
for jewelry and then half size tips all the way up the scale they've got 19 different tips he
originally designed these to weld airplane airframes and he was trying to make a torch
that you could get into all the different spots and something like that I've been using both of
these for about a week and I'm starting to prefer this one not necessarily to weld like this but
I'll show you how I use it I like using it like this you're going to want to get yourself a great
torch setup now today we're going to be using hydrogen and oxygen to weld not acetylene in
oxygen the hydrogen oxygen is a little cooler out of flame so we need a bigger tip to start
welding with but it's a cleaner flame so once we get set up to actually start welding I'll
show you the kind of flames that you need to weld with this blue feather torch is beautiful
I'm super stoked to have these and I can't wait to share how awesome they weld with you guys [Music]
next up I'm going to go through the gas setup we've got oxygen and hydrogen we are going to
run four pounds for hydrogen and four pounds for oxygen low gauge pressure for the hydrogen
and oxygen this torch runs the low pressure awesome specific for aluminum welding foreign
your eye protection you need a special lens that filters out the orange flash of the burning of the
flux now I don't know if a grade three or grade five normal green lens will do that it might but
I have TM Technologies tm2000 lenses these are very expensive I think there are other options
you can get I did a little research online and there are a couple others I can't vouch
for those but I know these work really well but this is like a 250 dollar lens so these are not
cheap but they're special They filter out the orange flash I don't know if like the other
regular green ones will do it but they might so you might try those because I know they're five
bucks a piece before you spend the big bucks on the filtering lens what you're trying to do is
like I said filter out the orange so you can see your flame and see the puddle on aluminum welding
the puddle is super hard to see the fact it's almost invisible so that's what you need eyewear
the next thing we're going to talk about is flux you need aluminum welding flux not
aluminum brazing flux any of that stuff you need aluminum welding flux Harris makes some Aladdin
make some the TM Technologies make some just do a Google search for aluminum welding flux
don't get aluminum brazing flux or any of that we have a five gallon bucket of it there's no label
on it we've had it for 20 years but I believe it's from Harris so you'll need that we'll do
the mixing of the flux here when we get ready to weld and I'll explain that but you need a flux to
weld aluminum that's your basically your argon or your shielding gas when you're gas welding foreign
next up we're going to talk a little bit about aluminum the aluminum I use mainly is 3003 3003
that's the alloy you can gas weld 6061 and uh 5052 I don't have a lot of experience in that welding
rod wise with the 3003 I'm going to be using 1100 welding rod to gas weld this I believe with 6061
you might have to use the 5356 or 4043 like I said I don't have a lot of experience in that
so you're going to have to do the testing on that stuff my main focus has always been 3003
and so that's what we're going to work with here prep wise here in our shop all of our aluminum
is plastic covered so it's nice and clean you feel the plastic give it a little acetone wipe
on the edges and you should be good to go ahead and weld it just like that but if you have stuff
that's been sitting out uncovered you're going to prep the surface gas welding is extremely picky
if you have any dirt or Grime it's going to make your life miserable when you're trying
to weld it so what I recommend this is my personal preference is a red Scotch Brite
a lot of folks use a stainless steel wire brush and that is perfectly fine and Okay the reason
why I don't like a stainless steel brush is because here we anodize everything and this
tends to scratch outside of the surface so when I go like this and you're cleaning the edges you
might have one of the wires go off to the side and scratch and when you anodize it that shows
up in the anodizing and I don't like the way it looks when you have the red Scotch Brite you can
do it along the edge and keep it nice and tidy and it's less noticeable when you go weld so
I'll do both sides of this with one or the other and you can kind of see what I'm talking about
just a little more controlled here with the Scotch Brite than it is with the wire brush
I like making it nice and tidy and then what you're going to want to do is put on a pair of
rubber gloves because if you're dealing with acetone and this stuff every day you're going
to end up jacking up your liver and we don't want that I've got my acetone here you hit it
with the Scotch Brite wire brush whatever your preference is and just wipe it so it's clean
and that should be all you should have to do to prep it just make sure it's clean very
minimum hit it with the acetone on the edge because sometimes we've got the plastic and
you shear it and sometimes it'll be a little tiny little thread of plastic on that back
side it's going to jump into your Weld and make your life miserable so learn from my experience
wipe everything down and that's how you should prep your aluminum make sure it's clean [Music]
all right I know this is a video on gas welding but we're going to use our TIG
setup to tack this is the easiest best way to tack your gas welding because your fit has to
be perfect so I'm gonna go ahead and go through all the settings on my machine while we're here
I've got a number five cup on a collet I've got a three Thirty second tungsten it's an E3
tungsten I'm going to run it just slightly inside the cup I'm at about 130 amps on AC
current my balance is at 75 my frequencies at a 175 Hertz and that's how I'm going to run
my TIG setup I'm running argon at the silver 20 cfh and that's how I'm running my TIG setup for
attacking so let's move over to the bench I'll show you kind of how I tack this stuff together
all right we're gonna do some TIG tack in here for our aluminum welds if you're running three double
O three aluminum you shouldn't have to add the add filler Rod you should be able to fuse these
just fine if you're using 50 52 or 6061 you're going to have to use Rod how I tack stuff like
I said I back set my tungsten I'll go ahead and squeeze these together and just kick the pedal
[Music]
foreign
if you're gonna do 50 52 or 60 61 make sure you tack it I don't know maybe even every half inch
because if it separates on the aluminum weld you're gonna blow a hole and your gas welding
is over gas welding is not very easy you have to have a perfect perfect setup otherwise your
weld is going to look like a bird walked across it and went to the bathroom so use
tack that's got to be perfect if it's not perfect TIG weld it or start over [Music]
the different kind of flame than a settling flame it's a little harder to see but our goal is to be
running what's called a neutral flame it's not a sharp pointy flame it's got a nice round front
and that's where we're going to start to do this welding you can weld with an oxidizing Flame the
hotter flame in fact when I come to a point where I have doublers or something behind it where I
need more heat I'll just crank the oxygen welding with the oxidizing flame is just fine but we're
going to start at a nice neutral flame and we'll give it a test if it's not melting as quickly as I
want then we'll turn it up the heat once you start getting towards the end of your weld it will start
running away from you so you need to be ready to start moving fast like I said I'm gonna try to
capture this behind the lens so you can kind of see I have an overhead light this helps out so
much being able to see the puddle because like I said it's not a shiny puddle just looks like
aluminum once you've done it enough you can kind of tell when it starts to melt but this is a very
hard puddle to see you need to go ahead and flux Your Rod I usually will grab it up about halfway
if you are storing your rods just in the Box in your shop and letting the moisture get to them
you're going to want to wipe them down with the Scotch Brite and the acetone because they will
build up an oxide layer you don't want that in your weld if you're going to start doing aluminum
stuff make sure you store all your stuff and sealed cases like this and it just helps out where
you don't have to spend so much time cleaning everything keep it stored nice nice dry spots
and then you don't have to worry about it but if you're not you need to Scotch Brite your rods wipe
it down with acetone so it's clean everything here has to be clean clean otherwise it's not
going to weld all right so I'm gonna get started here let's get a little bit of heat in here you're
looking for that edge to break away and then you add rod and start moving if this is not fit
perfectly it's going to blow a big hole and make your life miserable like I've said a dozen times
but I'm just pushing the puddle forward adding Rod pushing it Forward adding Rod pushing it Forward
adding rod and so on and so forth I'll go ahead and get through this weld we'll take a look at it
you can see on how much this heat warps this panel but if you take it over to the planishing Hammer
or Mallet on a table flatten right back out you also start to notice here as I'm getting
closer to the end it's going to really speed up we're going to pull away let it cool down a lot
we'll go back in Chase it off the end again pull away real fast let's do this a couple
times until that little Center section is out of there so that's our first little weld if you like
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