Welding Tips and Tricks

New to welding trying to weld alum. Seems that ever time I weld all I get is balls an it does not stick to the alum plate. It also has black material in the weld.
Thanks

Make sure you clean the aluminium real good before you weld it. Wipe the weld area down with some lacquer thinner,and then brush it with a clean stainless steel brush just before you weld. Any other type of wire brush will contaminate the weld. I assume you're using a spool gun so check the tip stick-out, you might have to adjust it a little. Check the wire speed and the voltage settings for whatever thickness you're doing. Any plate thicker than 1/4 inch should be preheated first.

The black soot should brush off or wipe off after the weld. Sometimes the spoolgun wire will oxidize if it's been out in the air for awhile.

Hope that helps. I'm sure there's more.

Only thing missing from delraydella's soot eliminating list is regarding the Argon flow rate and MIG gun technique, sooty welds tends to point to improper shielding from the gas. Don't forget the porosity and weak weld stregnth from insufficient shielding as well.
Soot in Alu welding tends to come from 2 places
1)- using a pull method tends to create soot. Solution: "Push" technique on the gun. This keeps a larger "ball" of gas coverage around the weld as you move forward.
2)- Gas flow rate. Again insufficient gas coverage tends to sooty welds. Make sure the gas flow rate (CFM) is sufficient to eliminate soot.
A little bit of fine tuning and you should be able to get clean welds at full stregnth and don't forget...practice makes perfect.

Aluminum is the most difficult alloy to weld. Aluminum oxide should be cleaned from the surface prior to welding. Aluminum comes in heat treatable and no heat treatable alloys.

I also need help welding aluminum . im welding 1/4 poles for a coommercial vessel with a millermatic 211. spootmate 100 gun using 5056 wire or seomthign like that to fight corrosion. But i cant seem to find the right wire speed for it. Could someone tell me the right wire speed , better positions if any and just alil walk through of it. Much aprreciated.

Hi there,

Jody has been uploading some Aluminium spool gun videos on this site. Use the search engine on the main page to track em down.

Mick