Welding Tips and Tricks

Have heard of aluminum loading up on abrasive surfaces. Now, I know what they are speaking of. Attached is a pic of a what I am speaking of. It's on a die grinder stone attachment.

Anyway to prevent or get aluminum off the abrasive??

Don't use a stone. Use a carbide burr and Pam cooking spray on the burr. Reapply often.

Or use industrial wax like this or maybe another brand. On a carbide burr...

CASTROL 140 Stick-Wax Metal Working Lubricant 14 oz Tube

http://www.travers.com/140-stick-wax-me ... aQodZ_UIAQ

LPS 43200 Cutting Oil, 13 oz, Wax Bar

https://www.zoro.com/lps-edge-lube-13-o ... lsrc=aw.ds

To get it off the stone, I use the dressing tool that I normally use on the bench grinder.

Side note: I've been told that grinding aluminum on the bench grinder can be dangerous to the wheel and cause it to fracture.

I'm sure I've heard that beeswax is best. Or was that a strange dream?

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IanC wrote:I'm sure I've heard that beeswax is best. Or was that a strange dream?

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Probably works. I have had some strange dreams, but never dreamt about beeswax.

I saw a grinding stone in a surface grinder explode as someone was useing it on aluminum. Fortunately he was standing a few steps away when it went. But it mangled up the guard shield that was at the end of the machine, and bent the mandrel for the wheel..

Thanks for the replies. Prob can find bees wax and Pam. Going to have to search for carbide burrs. On the comments about stones disenigrating, Note the tip of the stone in the pic. It was coming apart. After the pic, I cleaned the stone in pic with my grinding wheel, the went at it again. Except using the top of the stone, and it began to disenigrate.

Thanks again guys. Now to search for carbide burrs.

Look here for info on carbide burrs as I asked this question recently:

http://forum.weldingtipsandtricks.com/v ... =5&t=10425

There are specific burrs for aluminium. They have a very coarse cut, to stop or reduce the loading issues you are seeing. Regular steel cut burrs have a fine cut.

http://www.suttontools.com/products/alu ... hank-b218/

Mick

Did an impulse purchase of a basic set of carbide burs on Amazon, before I the post on special aluminum burs that had coarser flutes. I did follow the Sutton Tools link. But they redirected me to the North American site, which did not have the aluminum burs. I'll see how the finer cut amazon burs do, then order 1 cylindrical aluminum bur.

Thanks guys for the replies. I can always count on weldingtipsandtricks.com to bail me out.

They'll be out there somewhere. I like to google search images, and then back track to a website once you have found a picture of what you want

Before I used the right stone for doing aluminum i would get it to the point it is in the picture then use a old file or something sharp and dress off the built up aluminum.

Soak the stone in ammonia to remove the aluminum. Old slivers of bar soap work great to keep the aluminum from loading too bad. Better than wax even. Works on burrs too. Soap is a salt of fatty acids and sodium so it is aggressive to aluminum plus it has a higher melting point.

Keith_J wrote:Soak the stone in ammonia to remove the aluminum. Old slivers of bar soap work great to keep the aluminum from loading too bad. Better than wax even. Works on burrs too. Soap is a salt of fatty acids and sodium so it is aggressive to aluminum plus it has a higher melting point.

True. And I'll point out that Dial and Dove are NOT "soap", they're detergents. Ivory is soap.

Actual soap will say, "soap", while Dial, Irish Spring, Lever 2000, et. al. will say "bath bar" or some other nonsense.

Steve S

While we are on the subject of soaps (and bars of chemicals) smear it on your wood screws to make screwing them in a bazillion times easier

I use bee's wax for screws. Never thought about putting it on my stones for aluminum. But I'll probably try it now.

At work we use Boelube on all of our abrasives for aluminum and all aluminum drill bits and burrs. It's hard at first but melts as the tools heat up. You can also apply it to the surface.

WoodpeckerWelder wrote:At work we use Boelube on all of our abrasives for aluminum and all aluminum drill bits and burrs. It's hard at first but melts as the tools heat up. You can also apply it to the surface.

That is good stuff, we used that also for tapping.