hey therewell.com world my name is matt schwartz and i'm the welding geek
the welding geek you ask why the welding geek well it's because i weld stuff like that for my day job
and i weld stuff like this for my hobby
so let's make something cool
so i've got 12 of these little diamonds here and we're going to put together this
shape called the rhombic dodecahedron i think is what it's called
so what that's going to show you is kind of how i tack things together i'm going to do a bunch of
tig welding i'm going to do some gas welding too this is o80 so aluminum is measured in the actual
thickness it's not gauge so you'll see aluminum and like o63 which is .063 about a sixteenth of an
inch this is o80 and my preferred alloy of choice is 3.003 and 303 is wonderful because unlike 5052
and 6061 this stuff is less brittle it's a way easier to work with it's pretty strong
i mean we make all of our fuel tanks here for 330 mile per hour race cars that shake like crazy
out of this material so it's plenty strong enough and the cool part about 303 is you can fuse
tack it without it cracking so it's easy to put together so our project here is i got 12 of these
little diamonds and as i put it together it's going to make this shape and we're going to
tig weld a bunch of them or tig well to hold the seams not a bunch of them and then gas weld
um some of the seams as well just to show off that cool gas welding aluminum which is kind of a dying
art but it's also pretty cool so i'm excited to show you guys that as well all right we're going
to start with the torch head and work our way to the machine i run a nice speedway torch head
i love these things they're strong they're tough they have this nice shaped handle here that you
can spin around i like to hold it like that so it locks into place get that torch angle head correct
it's really nice i love speedway torch heads i run a gas lens and usually between six
seven and eight uh cup depending on what i'm doing also going to run a two percent thoriated tungsten
when i'm welding aluminum i know that's a little different i like to try to keep as much of a point
on uh my tungsten as possible which will have to come into my balance as well because if you
run too much balance you're going to ball up that tungsten i like to have it as pointy as possible
because i run into a lot of situations where there's a tube through a flared hole i want to
have that point control to start my puddle on the tube and burn it down into the flare and when you
have a balled up tungsten it's really hard to get point control with your heat so i like to be very
precise very controlled where my arc is pointing to so like a two percent authority tungsten with a
spine of a point now it's not going to be a pointy point it is going to ball a little bit and you'll
see what i mean hopefully with some of these videos we're going to be shooting but two percent
orated tungsten is the way i like to weld with all right going down to the machine i've got a dynasty
280 miller welder we're going to show you i'm running probably run around 150 amps depending on
how things are coming out when i'm welding that might seem a little high for some people a little
low but i step weld which is a different kind of welding where i'm gonna pulse the pedal with my
foot manually it's kind of like pulse welding through the machine but i'm gonna do it all
manually and it's i do that for control i'm all about controlling my puddle i'm gonna run my
balance at around in between 70 and 75 i've been playing with this this is a new welder
that i just got been trying to work through its kinks and work through its differences
right now i'm happy with 72 and my frequency is going to be really high at 250 so you're going
to hear this thing screaming welding aluminum you need to be on ac when you're looking at
buying a tig welder i would highly recommend buying an ac dc welder so you have the option
of both welding aluminum and steel so we're gonna put on the amps i'm running 100 argon
the flow rate is probably going to be pretty probably around 30 maybe a little lower just
depending on how things are going so that's how i have my machine set up i am going to be using
either a 16th or 332nd 40-43 rod it just makes it the weld seem less brittle
now if you're anodizing your part the color is going to be slightly different and that's why
people don't like using 4043 but i find 5056 because it can crack sometimes and i don't like
that so we're going to stick with 4043 and then with gas welding we're going to use our 1100 rod
so i'm gonna get kind of situated here um those are the things don't forget
have your self a nice welding helmet with the right shade of lens so you're not burning your
eyeballs out i like to run run my helmet when i'm welding around between 150 to 200 amps and run a
shade 12. if i go above that i might put in a 13 or a 14 in my other helmet you're gonna want a
mask not necessarily for welding right now but if you're grinding welding something that might have
paint off to the side not in the well but that stuff's burning you want to be wearing a mask
safety glasses and my gloves are way over there i'm gonna have to go get them but also a set of
gloves to protect yourself you want long sleeves protect yourselves because you can get sunburned
from welding so you want to protect yourself from that and well burns don't tan they just burn
all right so i'm gonna start tacking these diamonds together and what i do is typically is
you have the tungsten and you want it perfectly flat at the end because i'm actually going to
put these together like this and then hold that against the middle and just pop the
pedal and it should fuse tack together these pieces uh cleanliness the wise if you don't
have plastic covered aluminum you might want to wipe this stuff down with some acetone
or deburr the edges scrub them but all this stuff here is plastic covered so this should
be plenty clean enough so i'm start tacking stuff i'll get a couple of tacks popped here
and i'll bring it up to the camera and kind of show you what it looks like and then we're going
to get to work getting this thing together because this is going to be a lot of welding
boom just like that they're tacked not a whole lot of penetration but that will hold
that together and we're going to start doing that all the way around this we're trying to
tack these things corner to corner and then once we get a full shape we'll start burning
so
all right before i put this last and final diamond piece in there i think i'm actually going to pop a
hole in it flare it so i put this on be like a vase or something give it some function
let's weld this thing
so
all right it is gas welding time like i said i left this last panel in a rhombic d decahedron
uh to gas weld i've got just a standard torch here gas welding torch when you're
welding aluminum you use hydrogen and oxygen not acetylene in oxygen hydrogen burns cleaner
so it's it's ideal for welding aluminum i have my propane torch here to start my
my torch we're also going to use a flux more or less the argon or shielding gas of gas welding
we use this both on our project here in on the rod and then we're going to start
our flame the flame is going to be kind of a feathered flame so i'm going to flux this out
all right so i preheated that just to get it hot so when i put the flux on it dries really quick
go ahead and start my torch and see just how clean that thing burns
it's a tig weld gas weld
so more or less looks like another weld on the inside there
but the reason why we do this is a gas weld is a very strong pliable weld this this weld seam
never going to crack you're more likely to tear the parent material than this weld failing at
all ever and what we use it for this is a top fuel funny car tank and we gas weld these seams
all the way around here on both the fuel tank and the dry sump tank and what happens if you've ever
been to an nhra drag race watched nhra drag racing these are like the most violent explosive vehicles
ever the the engines will grenade they'll explode they'll blow the bodies the fifths and pieces um
and sometimes he'll backbeat especially into the oil tank and balloonish and yet this
gas weld seam never fails so that's where we do that gas welded seam it's actually an
old like world war ii method of welding for like the wing tanks and all the tanks for
the old airplanes back in world war ii um so it's kind of a dying arc but yet we still
use it here on our fuel tanks which is awesome that's why i wanted to show off the gas welding
it's not something very many people do but it's a beautiful weld it's a strong weld
and it's pretty cool to be able to say you can do it yeah i'm happy with that pretty cool
what'd you guys think of that video i hope you enjoyed it if you did i'd appreciate a like on
the other video if you've got any questions or comments comment below and i'll try to
get back to you guys on those questions i hope you guys will subscribe to thewell.com channel
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specific to the app it's also a place where you can show off your awesome welds also a place where
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that and and that way you can introduce yourself to the well.com world also um as you can see here
this beautiful set of mandalorian armor i made this myself out of hand and not a metal
and you can see how i made all this stuff over at my channel the welding geek if you wanted
to also check that out my name is matt schwartz i'm the welder geek and thanks for watching guys
you