Tjabo

I was messing around with some intercooler pipe scraps yesterday, and while I was having some trouble with my Mig, the gas welding worked pretty awesome. I would have absolutely no doubts about the seal being perfect (no porosity), and I'd think I could even get it to look decent eventually, but probably never as beautiful as a nice Tig weld.

Anyone on here ever gas weld any aluminum?

k24em2

Gas as in oxy/acetylene?

Tjabo

Exactly!

I've got a lot of Coke cans, I think I might give it a shot, but I probably need a smaller tip/torch than I have. . . Maybe we'll see.

ABK

pictures

Tjabo

Okay, if you insist. . . . Just don't form your whole opinion of this process on my hack attempts!:



I also took a crack at the Coke can thing, but I burnt the whole can up! LOL. . .

These attempts have been hampered by:

-My lack of knowledge
-I'm running extremely low on Acetylene, so my gas flow/pressure wasn't super steady
-My lack of skill
-Chinese intercooler tubing aluminum

But anyway, there you go! Not pretty, but perfectly functional, and I think this is the process I'll use to build an exhaust after I get my new bottom end in the car and can let the boost go a bit. Maybe I'll actually figure out how to make a decent looking weld this way eventually.

fav6052

no need to make it pretty. smooth it out and repolish. do an entire aluminum exhaust.

ABK

more pictures.

Tjabo

What do you want to see? ? ? More ugliness? LOL. . .

Ideally to do this a little better I need to get a different color lens for my welding goggles, and some fresher supplies. I do intend to do that, so if I'm goofing around after that and turn out something that looks decent, I'd be happy to show that.

In the mean time, let me know if you've got anything specific you'd like to see, and I can try. One bit of ugliness that I probably DON'T want to show is a piece I was messing with on Saturday. I started out fooling around with different stuff with my battery powered spool gun (mig), including some 75/25 gas just for the heck of it, which really didn't work! Even with the pure Argon though, I was having trouble getting a good weld bead going. I could do tack welds really fine with it, but then if I tried to carry a bead all hell broke loose. I made a BUNCH of ugly stuff happen!

Then I decided to get out the gas torch, and started straight off by adding another section to the end of the piece I was destroying with the mig. The gas weld looks fantastic compared to what I was doing with the mig, but still looks about the same as what I posted the pics of, or maybe not even quite as good. The rest of the piece is an abomination though.

So anyway, what do you want to see?

essex

i like that, pretty cool

KFMRC

There is a special flux and also special cobalt blue glasses that make torch welding aluminum easier

Bailhatch

what's the back of the weld look like?

ABK

dude that's not bad for what you are doing it with, lol. I want to see more once you get more practice in it.

HiProfile

The prob with mig'ing alumium is the control needed for thin stuff. Besides getting the base metal extremely clean, of course.

I was looking for more info on this, and saw some vids showing this process except using flux. The guy did .030" alum and made a perfect weld. The weld was about 3/8" wide, very consistant, and he bent it all up to prove its strength. I may be getting into this, since a new torch setup seems to be half the price of a used TIG. He kept refering to the puddle as looking like 'jello'...

Tjabo

I guess I owe a couple of responses, since I didn't really have any time yesterday.

These welds were made using OLD flux from Tinman Technologies (or maybe it's "TM Technologies"?). I got it about four or five years ago, and messed around with learning to butt weld some 1"x1/8" aluminum strap together on the long side. I also have some Crown 100 flux, and I can't remember if that worked as well or not. The problem is that I left the fluxes in my garage (in Michigan), and between the humid summers and frigid winters, the stuff is in rough shape. I plan to buy some fresh stuff from TM Technologies and put some more work into it.

For the technique, I also bought a couple of video tapes from TM, including his (Kent White) basic instructional video, and one made up of old archival footage from Alcoa I think. I've got to go back and look at that one again.

As mentioned above, the weld pool isn't a pool, and this initially caused me some problems because I've done a lot of gas welding on steel over the past 30 years or so, and the technique is different! That description of the pool being like jello is pretty accurate. Once you get it to that consistency, if you bring in the filler rod, the flux takes over and everything just kind of merges together. The more filler rod you add, the fatter the weld bead gets--it's strange how it just expands. . . . And then you've got to really move along too, or the aluminum will just sag and then drop out.

Regarding the goggles, one thing that isn't helping me is that I've been using standard gas welding goggles, so the orange flare from the flux really obscures my vision quite a bit. I've read that the cobalt blue lenses have led to a lot of eye damage over the years, since apparently they filter the orange, but maybe not the UV or something. I do plan to buy some better goggles for this, but right now I'm kind of torn between forking over the bucks for the TM 2000 lens (which looks great in the videos, and is supposed to be very protective), or trying a Cobra lens, which is much cheaper:

http://www.fournierenterprises.com/c...9&cat=9&page=1

The backs of these welds are not beautiful (of course neither are the fronts). My objective was to fully join the outer layer to make a good seal, and then penetrate deep enough to have strength, without causing a bunch of intrusions into the inside of the tubing. I pretty much did that, but it left a remaining line around the inside of the weld where the tubes are butted together. I can cut the tubes lengthwise and open them up, that way I can see how they deal with the bending, and also take pictures. I'll section out the short chunk on the longer one for opening it up, so I can weld the two remaining pieces back together again!

Oh, and here's the website address for TM Technologies:

http://www.tinmantech.com/

After searching around for information and equipment, I have to highly recommend this guy for good information, good equipment, and good prices. Those little Meco torches he carries are sweet, and his price on them is the best I've seen. I think I might buy one before the summer exhaust building season comes around. My big ole' Victor torch is a little clunky for this kind of stuff.

Tjabo

I only had a second, so I just cut open the shorter of the two pieces in the picture above, and kind of opened it up. I hit it real quickly with the wire brush so you can see it a bit better. There are a couple of places that look like they could be not-so-sealed, but I took a close look at them and they are definitely sealed up.

Here you go:


I'm actually getting kind of motivated to see if I can do some good welds like this. Gas welding aluminum is fun! Tonight I'm going to order some new flux (different brand than I've used before, and some appropriate goggles.

pauld

been thinking of trying this for a while now....Have you (or anyone else) tried that "ATS 2000" aluminum brazing rod for things like IC piping? The video from the website seems impressive, but anyone here actually used/tried it out yet?? I always like looking for innovative, new ways to approach a job.

Tjabo

I haven't tried any of that brand. I did try some other stuff, but it was before I got the hang of this aluminum gas welding at all, so that means it was a long time ago. . . The stuff I tried didn't work at all, and I have a hard time believing that any of it would, but who knows. . . ?

pauld

From what I have "heard" , aluminum brazing has made some big progress in the last couple years, both in terms of useability and strength. I guess I may buck up and have myself a little "experiment" on some scrap. Was hoping someone on here has given alum brazing a shot......

Tjabo

Please let us know how it works!

pauld

btw - the brazing rods are "HTS-2000" - my bad on the spelling earlier.