Welding Tips and Tricks

Hey guys, i am new to the forum and fairly new to welding in general. My dad has a restaurant and he broke one of his chafing stands. It is fairly thin stainless steel. It was spot welded originally. My question is can i tack weld it with just standard mig wire? I was trying to avoid buying a full roll of wire for 2-4 tacks. It doesn’t have to be pretty it will not be seen. Just needs to hold. I do have TIG capabilities with one of my machines but have not tried it yet. Thanks

It is best to use stainless wire on stainless material. If you can run your TIG machine, buy the smallest amount of 308L TIG wire in 1/16 and weld with that.

For amperage with your TIG, for spot welding, use the formula of 90%/0.001 of material thickness. If the stand is made from less than 1/16 thick material, you can even drop to a thinner diameter filler wire, but the 1/16 will prove useful to have on hand for other tasks that arise.

with mig you also need the proper gas.

with tig, you could do it without filler. but it needs to be a tight fit up. (also needs argon not mig gas).

I know Ive said this before in other spots and I swear I'm not on comission from sibronze suppliers
But tig brazing is a good remedy for broken spot welds because it takes less heat so you mininmise damage to SS and still get same strength of an average spotweld. It is easier for a beginner to do on thinner stuff, I thinks anyway. Its fun.
And you can find a nice 1.6mm stick or two at most Local Welding Shops.

If possible I'd do a fusion weld on it with a quick burst from a Tig torch.

When it's commercial food stuff you have to think of how it will look down the road if you weld it with carbon.pretty sure it wouldn't comply with most health codes if welded with carbon filler as well.

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i have some stainless stuff at work thats been welded with steel and its all rusty.
food inspector would throw a fit.
also even stuff thats not been passivated will rust around the weld area and looks awful. just another spot for inspector to bitch about.

so even if you tack it back in place, its going to need acid treatment to clean it up.