I was at the shop the other day, and some radom guy came by to get a few aluminum welds he need done for a school project. After he tried his hand on the tig, I ended up having to do it for him. I didn't mind there weren't alot of welds that needed to be done. But when I was finished he started telling me about a mig that he ordered thats for welding aluminum. I've never heard of anything like that, has anyone seen or used an aluminum mig welder? how well does it work?

 

he's probably talking about a pulser mig. i saw some demonstration welds at the local welding supply place. looked pretty sweet and they say it's uber fast. it was a miller btw

 

Cool... at first I was a little skeptical

 

you don't need a pulser or anything special, just a regular mig welder and a spool gun. I used one for about 1-1.5hrs. in class and I mastered it - it's extremely easy to do after it's setup. You can easily control bead size and penetration and you can go the same speed as doing mild or go 50+% faster. Welds look just migging mild but you get the same black/gray haze from dropping your tungsten in the puddle, but it wipes off and looks pretty when clean.

the only down side is that you need plenty of scrap to fine tune it and you can only do so many beads before the piece heats up, making you stop or turn down the volts - aside from that, it kicks ***

 

the pulser i looked at was used for like production welding that had to look pretty. i think in the brochure they were doing like bike frames or something. i'll just use my tigger. but yeah i guess they do exist.

 

Any MIG with gas feed can be used to weld aluminum... Just not very thick, and not as purty as TIG. You don't even need a spool gun, it just helps prevent the wire from getting jammed.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by silly4lude &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">he's probably talking about a pulser mig. i saw some demonstration welds at the local welding supply place. looked pretty sweet and they say it's uber fast. it was a miller btw</TD></TR></TABLE>

hope everyone was wearing the correct eye protection if they were demonstarting welds as in actually welding the metal infront of you

 

yeah there were like 3 people in there. it was near closing time.

 

the welder i just bought had a video that had directions on welding aluminum with it.... said you had to pre heat it to 200 and wipe it with a de-oxidizer and then weld away. 100 percent argon and aluminum spool of course

 

spool gun or push-pull is best, but like someone said earlier just a regular old mig can do it, just expect it to birdsnest quite a bit.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by beepy &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Any MIG with gas feed can be used to weld aluminum... Just not very thick,</TD></TR></TABLE>

a combination of mig welding thick aluminum and lack of welding knowledge.

some local hack shop made several of these hasport (old school) copies. I should start recording the prank calls.