Aluminum is ver rarely used to food grade applicationd because of how poris of a material it is. Almost all food stuff will be 304 or 316 because it can be cleaned easily. The pores ib the alumibum will trap food particles and could lead to bacteria gtowth.

Got to do a little gravy tig brazing last night. Had 700 of these frames to do last night. Nothing fancy just 18 ga cold rolled steel and a 2 inch seam corner to corner.

Looking good, especially for someone who doesn't do it very often. Heck looks a lot better than a lot of the weld tests I have hiven lately. Keep practicing and you will be stacking dimes in no time.

Mild steel and stainless beads will narrower than aluminum. I really don't recomnend weaving unless you have to. Because it does make a much larger heat affected zone. Another option to laying wider flater veads on thin material is to manually pulse the foot pedal when you add rod I have found that ...

As long as the price is good and it isn't beat to crap and run into the ground, it would be a good choice. Most of the new machines and their features are not needed for your normal everyday fab type work

No there is no need to cut it everytine you junk your tungsten, as long as you grind it clean you are fine. I was referring to if you cut or break your tungstens in half to fit a short back cap becareful because some will crack if not done correctly. Diamond grinding wheels/ special tungsten grinder...

I am going to have to look for those.

You can use pure(green) on a inverter, I do for the xray alum pressure tanks I do so I don't risk tunsten spitting. I know you said you were running a balanced 50/50, mayb try 70/30 add more dcen so you are not putting so much heat on the tungsten from the dcep. Also try the 2 percent lanthanated th...

Looks like a very nice cleaning wheel do they last long?

Well if uou are getting long cracks it mayb from how you are cutting your tungstens to length. Some tungtens are very brittle so you need to be careful if you are using the break technique especially 2 percent lanthated and thoriated, I recommend cutting them. Sorry what I meant by lowering your bal...

Sounds like a very typical problem with a inverter machine and some of the different kinds of tungstens. That is a very common problem with 2percent thoriated (red) tungstens. A good trick I have found works is to get a peice of copper and turn your balance way down and light up on the copper till j...

A few tip that may help. The first tip is to try the technique jody uses it works extremely well for fillet welds another tip is try turning ac balance, filley do not require as much cleaning action because yhe area you are welding us concentrated, on that sane note yoy can also turn your gas flow d...

Those old trabsformer nachines are awesome, that's what I statted out on. The new machines are nice but to be honest I think using a old transformer makes you a better welder.

Was that 230 on a transformer machine? Cause I use 3/32 up yo almost 300 amps on the dynasty 350s at work.

I actually did the samething but on ac with a old syncrowave. I was welding sone .040 aluminum had 1/16 tungsten in and someone brought me sone 1/8 to weld so instead of changing ecerything out I tried to weld it and balled alnost all the way up inside the cup and then fell into the puddle. Oops!!!

I live in st. Boni kinda the far west metro. How about you?

Good to see a fellow minnesota guy on here dave.

Dcep is really only good for very thin material, like .030 and thinner. Not a good choice for welding fuel tanks. Dcep balls tge tungsten a lot so you need a much larger tunsten to be able to handle that.

Haha yep 2 percent thoriated make some goofy shapes on ac. I had one that almost made a perfect pitch fork lol. How fo those e3 work? Are they expensive?

Good find. 9 times out of 10 its seems like its a argon issue. Either bad gas, leak, bad defuser. I just had a bad defuser mess me up at work yesterday. Took me half the day to figure it out.

Glad you found a good one lol. I gave another weld test today and once again no luck:-(. I really we find a few good ones soonlol I am of 70 hour weeks.

That is very true. Usually the ones that talk a big game are the ones that are insecure about their abilities. It is easy to suvk at but there is a difference between people who are not as good but care and are willing to improve and those who are not good and think the y are amazing. Way to many of...

Got a "slider" job today. Really easy weld four tabs on these smaller aluminum boxes we do they. They get welded on both sides, ill post some pics on the next run, the tabs gey welded sll the way solid as well. Material is .063 5454, used .063 5554 filler.

You would be very surprised. From what I have seen just from working with a lot different welders and giving a lot of weld tests there is not that many good welders out there, especially in sheet metal. There is a lot of great pipe welders out tgere It seems like, it was fun to learn from them when ...

No but actually I did get a really large raise though. I actually quit fron this place two years ago and went into aerospace and than making dairy tanks and piping. But the for the two years I was gone they kept bugging me offering me more money, finally they made me offer I couldn't refuse, a 60 pe...