Welding Tips and Tricks

My welder is supposed to be able to weld 1/4 aluminum. Here are shots of a test I did fooling around. 6061, 5/8 x 3/4 inch. Took a while to heat up with the torch before the puddle. Looks like 1/16 penetration but I put it in a vise and whacked it with a 24 oz hammer 5 times hard. It held. It's just surprising how strong it turned out. That was about 100 amps. Maybe I'll try it again with max amps and preheat it.

If that is just a butt weld with no beveling that's not too bad.
If you want the best penetration bevel the edges at 35 to 45 deg with a 1/4 inch leg length, might end up a multi pass fill but it will have penetration.
Amazing how much heat thick aluminium can soak up eh.

I did something similar, the bar stock I used was 1" x 3/4 or such.
Being anodized I had to bevel the edges to get rid of the anodized surface.

The left side was done at 325 amps, the right was done at 200 or such.
You can clearly see the weld nugget on both sides after the acid etch.

In your case 100amps would be very cold for that thick of an AL to get much penetration in a single pass.

Both sides were done in one pass with a metric Fkton of heat being pushed into the weld.

Nice. Preheated with a flame or just the torch. What kinda acid? I didn't bevel or preheat.

nelson wrote:Nice. Preheated with a flame or just the torch. What kinda acid? I didn't bevel or preheat.

I believe you can use use a phosphoric based acid, or E-Z Off oven cleaner.

I did no preheat, with 325 amps I dont need no stinking preheat....


I used muriatic acid like they sell from a pool supply store.
It is what I use to strip plated bolts etc if I have to weld them.
Nasty stuff make sure to use outdoors.

Easy Off will also work along with naval jelly, that is just what I happen to have on hand at the time.

Now that I think of it I could have used that to remove the anodizing....

Oh well.

What little chem. I know I'd be surprised. Alum oxide is covalent stuff. I think the cleaning comes from suckling off electrons in a plasma cloud. .
I've never preheated yet-I usually melt aluminum b4 I think it's hot enough.