Welding Tips and Tricks

just a small stand for work.
pretty straight forward tho i made a rookie mistake. ran out of mig gas, setup flux core wire and forgot to change polarity. gave myself an hours worth of grinding
not quite finished, need to find some more scrap aluminum. at least the tig was fun

Looking good! What's the sheet metal for?

tweake wrote: pretty straight forward tho i made a rookie mistake. ran out of mig gas, setup flux core wire and forgot to change polarity.

Just living and learning, hopefully that's what we're all doing Next time it'll be better

tungstendipper wrote:Looking good! What's the sheet metal for?

thats a chute, well half a chute at the mo. just so when stuff falls down the center it doesn't go down your legs.

LtBadd wrote:

tweake wrote: pretty straight forward tho i made a rookie mistake. ran out of mig gas, setup flux core wire and forgot to change polarity.

Just living and learning, hopefully that's what we're all doing Next time it'll be better

welding is practice.
at least i didn't stuff up the ally tig. had quite a gap to fill due to poor fit up of the bits of scrap.

the weird thing is that i just realized that was my first bottle of mig gas i've ever used.
rather tig any day

welding finished. just add paint.

Looks like you got some helmet time welding aluminum! Looks Good!

tungstendipper wrote:Looks like you got some helmet time welding aluminum! Looks Good!

yeah and i need it to
having nice prep work would have made it a million times better. would have been nicer if it wasn't some half arse cut scrap.
also the sides are 2mm while the back is 3mm. a small size change to throw a curve ball there to.
also its all welding while in there. that aluminum can't come out. so i had to weld around the bolts and up against the steel.
makes it interesting. certainly not the best way to do it but its ok for what it is.

tweake wrote: the weird thing is that i just realized that was my first bottle of mig gas i've ever used.
rather tig any day

I use one bottle of mig gas at 80 cf for every 500 of tig gas. Not a bad way to live.

just got the stand back to weld a couple of tabs on to hold the chute a bit better.
sick of the flux core so i grabbed the stick welder and 7016.
so now its had stick, mig and tig

i much prefer the stick to the gasless flux core.