To me it seems like your bead is a bit on the cold side or to big of filler rod. 65 balance is a good starting place on a dynasty but I usually will run around 70 balance on butts with either a number 5 standard collet body cup for butt welds and about 73 balance for fillets, for thicker than .125 i...

Thanks Richard. Ya saved me a lot of time on these. Forming was open and had 120 to weld. Was a lot easier to squeeze them in the vise and weld, then to use clamps and tack then weld.

Anyone else use a small drill vise to hold small parts? Works really well to stop the parts from shaking and giving you a place to prop your hand. Did this .063 aluminum job yesterday and made it way easier.

Hardest thing about anything round is teaching yourself to constantly make adjustments to your torch angle as you go around the the tube or pipe. The smaller the tube the harder cause adjustments have to be made faster. I would get yourself some bigger diameter stuff and practice. Positioning really...

Got the project done and shipped 2 weeks aho. Thanks for all the help! Here is a few pics from the center section.

....I have seen the 1 video Jody did where after welding he heated the part back up to I believe 400 degress to relieve the stress. Would you recommend that as well or is that just for thicker aluminmum?.... No need to PWHT. Unless specified by code/specs. This ain’t CERN. You aren’t splitting atom...

@ Aaronmnwelder - recommend you build 2ea of these assemblies “back to back”. Think symmetry. Mechanically affix the base plates to one another via fasteners in the bolt holes. Use additional clamps to achieve a flat/flat geometry. Now, you will be welding an 1/8” tube to a sandwiched base plate of...

Gotcha. Is it possible to use chunky blocks for chilling and clamping while you tack up? that's kinda what I did. I used three big squaring blocks to hold the base down while doing and the tacking and welding. Problem is my table at work run 1/4 plus inch off the ends so its exactly the ideal flat ...

Is it possible to weld or tack the tabs in first, then tack the fillets? You might need to lay 4-5 tack dabs for the strength before you weld the tabs to prevent cracking or popping. Also, make sure you don't snap off your arc with the tacks but taper them on and off. Run some post flow over the ta...

Hey guys so I have to build 4 of these parts made them before a few times but always kinda struggled through this piece of the project. The part is a top cap to a 3 tier hydraulic actuated display. One of the problems I am having is keep the distortion down on the base plate. The base is .080 materi...

I would definitely check points had this issue occasionally on a old Miller syncrowave I used to weld with. Also not familiar with that machine is there a start amps knob on there? If your start amps are set way low that can also cause poor arc starts.

thanks for the idea! there is kinda a aluminum base I build them on but it doesn't fit super tight more for running the parts through the timesaver to re grain the top when we did that. mayb next time ill try and clamp down the top to that base. I usually use 2 large inspection squares to try and ho...

I like to use filler on 16 gauge most of the time but it just depends on what you're welding. Like if you're just capping the ends of some tubes with 16 GA I would fuse it but if I was building a tank I would add filler

really depends on use of what you are welding, whether you use filler or not. But typically for 16 gauge I weld it with .035 filler. if you use to large of filler it will cool the puddle to much and cause you top use more amperage and that combined with the larger weld pool is why its harder to get ...

I had to build 11 of these stainless table tops. They're about 72 inches long and about 40 wide. The top piece is 18 304 trim pieces are 14 gauge. I have built about 30 of these before but my boss wanted to save some money and not re grain the top of the tables, so I can't get any build up on the to...