Welding Tips and Tricks.

[64nailhead]

The exhaust on my TBSS is stainless MIG'd together with mild steel wire. Still holding strong after 8 years? Totally fine.

This ^^^^is my point. Once you can figure out the heat range, wire speed, and puddle control, then making very functional welds is not that hard with a little practice. When I bought the 110 mig I pretty much wasted a 5lb roll of wire and figured out what I can and can't do with it. It took about a month, but ....it was fun. I know that I can get 3/16 cold rolled steel welds to be very strong, and at 1/4" it isn't hot enough. Once we started putting a turbo on everything in the driveway, the little, budget mig became invaluable.

I have a friend that does tig work for us that makes it look like it was done with a machine - he's truly unbelievable. He's a master with aluminum and thin, crappy metal. But the tig work isn't needed most of the time. I say this and I'm looking for a tig for my garage presently, but only because I want to learn how to do it and then I can do aluminum exhaust on the cheap.

 

[motorheadmike]

This ^^^^is my point. Once you can figure out the heat range, wire speed, and puddle control, then making very functional welds is not that hard with a little practice. When I bought the 110 mig I pretty much wasted a 5lb roll of wire and figured out what I can and can't do with it. It took about a month, but ....it was fun. I know that I can get 3/16 cold rolled steel welds to be very strong, and at 1/4" it isn't hot enough. Once we started putting a turbo on everything in the driveway, the little, budget mig became invaluable.

I have a friend that does tig work for us that makes it look like it was done with a machine - he's truly unbelievable. He's a master with aluminum and thin, crappy metal. But the tig work isn't needed most of the time. I say this and I'm looking for a tig for my garage presently, but only because I want to learn how to do it and then I can do aluminum exhaust on the cheap.

Ahem... this just happened in under 2 hours.

The learning, not the welding that took minutes once I got the settings and process down. Chy-nah's finest aluminum meets 'Murican welding rods. When worlds collide!

I spent a lot of time on puddle control and torch speed. Perfect? No. Hold? Yes.

This PrimeWeld unit is the cat's meow.

 

[Supercharged111]

The exhaust on my TBSS is stainless MIG'd together with mild steel wire. Still holding strong after 8 years? Totally fine.

409? I've done that with the flux core before. Welds about like mild steel.

 

[motorheadmike]

To the new sub-forum!

 

[Hurricane77]

This PrimeWeld unit is the cat's meow.

Definitely looking at getting unit of the AlphaTig. Seen really good reviews on both. Will have to wait until the new shop is done later this summer though

As for tips and tricks, here's mine. If someone had told me this when I first started welding it would have saved me tons of headache and frustration:

For MIG, as someone already mentioned, wire speed, travel speed and voltage are all really important. You also have to pay attention to wire size vs amperage setting on your machine. You buy a 120V MIG to do the sheet metal on your car and figure you'll test it out on some 18 ga with the 0.035 flux core it came with and all you do is blow holes in your material. MIG wire diameter following the same concepts as electrical wire (cause that's what it is), larger diameter carries current more easily. What you're setting on the welder is voltage. Larger the diameter of wire, the more amps you're getting for any given voltage setting. With enough practice, yes, you could weld automotive sheet metal with 0.035 flux core, but it's going to take a lot of practice to get it right. Get yourself the gas and some 0.023/0.025 wire, it'll be a much easier learning curve. Especially with machines with discrete voltage settings (A,B, C, D, E etc), those machines may not go lower enough in voltage to effectively use a 0.035 wire on thin metals.

So, thin material uses thinner wire, thick material uses thicker wire. At the same time, you also can't just crank up the voltage willy nilly and expect to get penetration on thicker steel using a small wire. There's a point where the wire can't handle the current and all it's going to do burn up your tips.

That's my $0.02 ($0,016 with the exchange rate). Not a welder, just a guy WITH a welder

 

[motorheadmike]

Work on the HellKitty's exhaust continued today. Trying different approaches as I go. As much as I would like to be in a position to glue coupons together and scrap them as I will it - the money and time just ain't there. Switched to a #5 cup and cut the cfh down a smidge - it forced me to keep the tungsten much tighter to the piece and making for tighter beads.

The black pad you see is a piece of plumber's felt. It allowed me to rest my bare forearm on this 24" long piece of pipe for pretty much the whole circumference on both sides before I had to double it up for the last little bit.

This will come in handy for the next few stages of the project. I've had it for years but never used it until now.

 

[motorheadmike]

409? I've done that with the flux core before. Welds about like mild steel.

Whatever Magnaflow uses. The exhaust on the Monte is a combination of recycled GM stainless pre-turbo, and whatever grade stainless Flowmaster uses for the downpipe, all with 316 MIG wire off Amazon.

 

[83MonteCarloSS]

What worked for me was watching a bunch of videos and just giving it a try. Get a welding machine and start practicing. I bring home a bunch of scrap metal and I have started doing the body work on my Monte.

I started on the floor pans then moved to the inner wheel wells, next was the trunk now I'm on to the outer wheel arches, and feel like I've got it down. At least good enough to get the job done.

I started off not using enough heat. For body sheet metal now I use a 6 out of 10 heat setting on high, wire speed is 4 out of 10, and I'm using .025 wire with gas. I'm getting good penetration without blowing through the metal.

I would recommend to anyone starting out to get at least 2 or 3 angle grinders. I bought 2 right away and I'm going to be picking up a third because I want to have a wire wheel on one, a cutting wheel on another, and a flap disc on the third. It's so much quicker to be able to just pick up a grinder set up and ready to go and do your work and then grab the next without having to take off a disc to put a wire wheel on and back and forth.

Another tip I learned was to leave your patches big while welding them on and then cutting off the excess once the patch is done. It can help you hold pieces in place better than a small piece and it can act like a heat sink to help with cooling while welding.

Pictures are from the last patch I did today.

 

[motorheadmike]

If your ground clamp gets stupid hot to the touch and your welds suddenly look like sh*t, there might be a good reason.



I like rainbows and ain't got no beef with Pride - but, this isn't right.

 

[Bonnewagon]

Let's not forget acetylene torch brazing. Dissimilar metals and hard-to-weld stuff like cast iron can be joined by brazing. I extended the fork tubes on a scooter using 1" diameter stainless steel boat railing brazed to chrome plated steel fork tubes. I used nickel-silver rods and they worked great. Many, many, moons go I also fixed my Wife's big frying pan broken handle using a brass rod to braze it together. 45 years later it is still in use.