everybody it's matt from eastwood company and welcome to another edition
of eastwood tech videos they were talking about aluminum welding there's a
bunch of different ways that you can weld aluminum but today we're going to
cover probably the most popular two ways that's TIG welding and mig welding we're
going to start off with the more difficult of the to take welding TIG
welding is a more difficult process it's sort of like oxy-acetylene welding and
which you have a torch flame and you have a thorough that you're adding to it
so before you start welding aluminum the take water highly suggest learning the
basics on steel and then you can start jumping into a window so today I'm going
to just kind of fast forward and assume or hope that everybody is watching this
at least has a general grasp on how to welding process works or jump right into
it so with TIG welding aluminum there's a there's a couple key things you need
to do that makes you a success allows you to get a successful take weld
aluminum probably the number one most important thing is keeping the metal
queen keeping everything clean really aluminum welding and TIG welding in
general really needs to be as close to surgically clean as you can get
especially on aluminum so when you're starting with a fresh piece of metal
this is one that we just have a brand-new piece of metal you can see on
the back side here it looks no it looks pretty darn clean and that's there's no
huge grease spots on it or anything really offensive on the back of it but
in reality that's assets of special coating they put over the top of the
metal to keep it from corroding while it's just sitting on the shelves that
coding you cannot take well throw it's going to get going to cause a dirty well
to pop it's butter and caused some issues so what I've done on the other
side here as i clean the metal off i use just today really quickly one of these
little angle grinders with a 36 grit on it if it's something that's a thinner
grit or something don't want to use as a group as aggressive the sanding disc
could definitely use it
DA sander with 80 grit or 120 or you could you know downgrade to a 120 or
something for one of these discs even one of the little cookies the like
abrasive discs work work as well I'm so I've hit this with it with the 36 grit
and you can see it's a little bit different of a shade of metal on there
and that's a that's a queen metal now what happens is if this metal since we
clean this metal we would sit for a couple days or if it sits for a month on
the molecular level
this is starting to corrode getting corrosion just from the atmosphere from
the air even one holding this that's happening is it enough to cause an issue
where while we're standing here
probably not but if it sits for weeks months definitely at that point he could
start to cause an issue so what i always suggest to do I got good a good tip is
every time before you go to weld aluminum is take a stainless brush I
like to try and keep a dedicated stainless brush just for aluminum in a
separate one that I would use for steal this one for women and I would go over
this piece here with the wire brush where we're going well just to knock any
potential corrosion that got on the surface just from you know when it's
sitting around or potentially if something just call you dropped on your
workbench or something dirty there you can you can take any of that off so
that's how to prepare the the piece of real quick way if you want to really get
it as clean as possible the pre-painting prep our llovio see that's the key thing
i do want to mention you want to use our llovio see pre-painting prep we can use
straight acetone simple green or something like that to clean your part
do not any other under any circumstances
here's a heavy duty cleaner like a break between our chassis clean or something
that's aggressive like that a car between they have a an ingredient in
them that leaves a residue on the metal that even after you wipe it off and let
flash off there's a residue that could potentially be on the metal when you
burn
we start melting the metal it burns that residue and it creates basically what is
mustard gas so it's a you know obviously very harmful don't want to breathe that
in so if you make sure you use a low v OC formula like the pre straight acetone
or simple green or something like that a less aggressive cleaner those ones are
all okay and the flash off and be just fine
so again that's cleaning it so TIG welding aluminum there's a couple key
things would take welding aluminum you do need to use a hundred percent Oregon
pretty much all take welding you need to use a hundred percent argon the other
thing is you're going to flip your machine if you have an Eastwood machine
right here this switch here you're going to flip it over to a seaside you should
be familiar with the the amperage hear your pre in your post well I like to
crack the pre flow up a little bit higher and the post flow i like to crack
a little bit higher as well so i have that turned up a bit from where I would
well don't steal the reason being is that with aluminum as a lower melting
temperature it's going to solidify a little slower you need to keep your
torch and we'll show you a little bit held over the area the West Gabba well
that you put in need to hold your torch over for the post flow allow that metal
too cool solidify and you keep a little bubble of shielding gas around it so
that's why that's really important to make sure that your post flow is turned
up a little bit the the other dial that's pretty important here is the
clearance affect some machines may call this a balance control on our machine is
called a clearance effect essentially what you're doing in a short version of
this you're changing the sine wave that's coming out of the machine going
from positive and negative there's a sine wave that's going up and down by
playing with this style you can basically make the sine-wave hang to the
positive or the negative side so it can it can hang for a split second or two
longer what this means to you why you care that basically changes how much
that changes the size of your puddle and how much the machine actually cleans how
much the torch cleans when you're welding aluminum there's an additional
process that does not happen in steel which is actually cleaning the metal
before you start actually adding filler rod to it so with this by turning more
negative you're going to get an error more narrow puddle that's going to clean
less so the more negative it is the West queening you're going to get the more
you turn it towards the positive side the more your puddles going to get wider
but you're going to a larger cleaning area this is important if you're welding
different types of aluminum if you're welding apart that's actually on a car
that were there was on a car
it may just be a casting that's a more dirty women on the way I always describe
it as if you're welding a part that's off of a you know a nineteen twenties
car a piece of aluminum that's from nineteen twenties they obviously used
much poor quality than if you were welding something that was from a 2010
Mercedes they're going to use a lot nicer aluminum so you may have to change
your acquaintance affect your balance control to compensate for the quality of
the metal so with what we're welding today this is fresh clean aluminum i'm
using what's called a das lens here just pull my torture so i'm using a gas lens
set up which uses a little screen on the inside this this gasps let's setup is
much more efficient with the gas coverage the shooting gets coverage over
the area that would be weld which means that you can get away with which means
it cleans better and you can get away with running a little more towards the
negative side when you're welding aluminum so for this what we're welding
today I'm going to stick to negative 3 for the clearance effect i could
probably even drop a little bit lower if I wanted to before we're doing today
that's a nice safe spot so everybody's all setup will check our cords here make
sure everything's everything's tight you know that good
alright so we ever argon we consider a hundred percent Oregon setup and i'm
going to put on some safety equipment here the helmet and the gloves and i'll
put the machine on and we're just going to show you the process for TIG welding
i'm going to try and talk you through it as we're doing it because I feel that
it's better to kind of see rather than listening me listening to me go on and
on about it
thinking you guys can learn a little bit by just watching the process that seen
what it's supposed to look like
so we'll get gloves on here
you want to match your filler rod as close as you can to what your welding
the rod that we offer
is a 4000 series so two BR 4043 that's a type of aluminum and you take wire that
you get is going to have a the type of the type of filler material that is on
the top there so NER 4043 is a good all-around filler wire you can use this
for most should say most all repairs
you're pretty safe with using other is going to be instances where you may have
something that's that's a different a much different grade of aluminum that
you may have to upgrade or upgrade your filler wire to match more closely what
you're welcome
so we've got a shooting guess on and sit down here
so before I actually start welding show you
so what you're going to want to do move this all over here when you start
welding we're going to where we're going to actually hold our hand our torch in
the same spot for for a beat or two for a second a couple seconds we're going to
wet the torch clean the metal really well you'll see that they'll be like a
white halo that will kind of the ark will dance around then kind of put a
white halo around we're welding once you see that forming then you can start
giving it a little more throttle a little more pedal more amperage and
you'll start to see a shiny puddle open up once you start to see that Shaunie
patil open up that's when you're about ready to add the rod common mistake that
we see people make is that they soon as they start the ark they started filler
on what a quality and you need to kind of wait let that puddle open up then you
can add your filler rod and start moving so i'm gonna equip
so let me start here and then we'll kind of talk you through it
let me know when you're ready to do as you can see it's got a dancing around
there and give it more throttle get a little tiny there now I can add my still
ride
sad filler rod moving you can see that white halos kind of following where I'm
welding
and I am pumping the pedal a little bit that's the kind of keep my heat and
check with aluminum being such a heatsink I guess we want to make sure
that the piece doesn't get too hot we don't blow through so I'm just kind of
going along and that's why you hear that amperage the the sounds kind of changing
as I very the aperture my foot
all right now here at the end I'm going to back off real slow and one last stab
a filler everyone hold my torture over there hear it now once you hear that
stop that's when you can when you can let off so we had a little bit of a
little bit of a brown hero that you see there at the end
it means that there was a little bit of contaminant on this it could have been
just for my fingers touching this could have been a little bit there showed up
at the end so again if you really really really clean that the partner religious
with it you can really get a you know it surgically clean piece you won't get
that little brown hello there
for what for what we're doing here i prize should just wipe it off but it
doesn't hurt anything you know again 44 just demonstrating the process but you
can see on this piece here you see that flip it up here
there's that you can see the white here well thats its kind around our whole
entire world that's the cleaning area that we are talking about
so if we turn the setting we turn that setting up more towards the positive
side so if we go from negative 3 to say negative 1 this puddle is going to open
up quite a bit and you're going to see that he'll open up quite a bit as well
so that's that's the know that you have to play with that down to get the sweet
spot as you're learning so that's the basics to take welding aluminum
hopefully if you follow some of these little tips and tricks that gave some of
the steps can help jump-start you in to land some really nice aluminum welds the
most important thing is that you need to practice practice practice practice
that's probably the most important thing with TIG welding in general especially
aluminum start practicing on your own before you actually start welding
something that you care about so thanks for watching if you have any ideas for
future tech videos or anything else you'd like to learn from us for free to
leave us a comment in the the video comments section
make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel to get updates on everything
that eastwood and follow us on all other social media outlets facebook twitter
instagram at Eastwood kel thanks for watching we'll catch you next time
yeah