i've been practicing for about a week now on aluminum with my new tig welder and have had pretty nice sucess with it. i've been able to get down a basic bead but am having more difficulty making fillet welds. is there any tips or techniques to get these down? should a guy use more heat when doing the fillets? alot of times when i start the bead and try to feed the filler rod in it ***** up instead of filling properly. should i use a bigger or smaller filler rod size? thanks in advance for all replys!

 

With fillets it took me a lot more practice than the basic butt weld. I still am not as great as some of these guys but the are now looking pretty nice.

My advice is be patient patient patient on the aluminum fillet welds. You have to get both pieces nicely wetted out before you start traveling. If you do one or the other it just ***** up as you dip toward the torch. Once you get both pieces "ready" then start going along your bead. Also if one side is much thicker make sure to get a lot of heat into that side with your torch angle. You don't want to be blowing through the piece but if you keep both pieces at the edge of melting then it's easy to add the right amount of heat when you're ready to start traveling. I hope that made some sense.

Practice is the key with a few little tips along the way. It took me nights and nights of welding scrap after work to be happy with my weld quality. I'm just now happy enough with it to weld for other people.

 

The tips above are good, but I'll add more to it.

The problem with these fillet welds is that the arc wants to jump to one side or the other. When you get metal bridging the two, you can increase heat a bit, and continue to travel. It will take more filler metal than you think it will to get a nice, flat bead.

 

cool, it did seem to be alot easier to get a bead going when welding on an already hot piece. i will look for the pool on both pieces before adding the rod. what size rod do you usually use when filleting 1/8" thick or so pieces? i've been so far using 1/8 rod for them. it just sucks heating the pieces so much, they like to warp pretty easily when that hot. thanks for the tips guys!

i can't belive how fast i'm getting good at this. i think with another 3-5 hours of practice i will start building some parts. is aluminum generally the more difficult metal to tig? i havn't tryed anything else yet becuase i have to buy the proper consumables.

 

for an 1/8" AL fillet, i generally use a 3/32 rod.
and like explained above, make a weld pool and then add filler.
a good thing to try would be small circles with the arc, to get the pool started, then steady the arc and add filler..
ken

 

Some people say aluminum is the hardest metal to weld, others disagree.

I taught some classes a while back for a company that was teaching people to weld. They needed welders and there just weren't many in the area. I would be given students and would be told whether they were to do stainless or aluminum. Many had never welded in their life. I did find that the ones that did aluminum seemed to pick it up faster. Those on stainless took some time to get the proper heat figured out. Aluminum is much more lenient, as far as how much heat you use.

 

I have welded both and personally I think aluminum is much easier. It is alot easier to get the aluminum welds to look more uniform. After time you will find that the fillet welds are actually easier to make look nicer. As some others stated you will use alot more heat and alot more rod on a fillet weld.