# HELP!!! Aluminum welding



## Delesandwich (Dec 30, 2008)

:headknock I just started a new project... Completely gutting the old jon boat, extending the front deck aft with an enclosed fuel cell, re-bracing all of the ribs, building aft boxes and re flooring all out of aluminum the only issue is i just have a Mig w/Argon. i know i can buy aluminum wire but have heard of feed issues without a spool gun. if anyone has any input it would be greatly appreciated.


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## ss mudminnow (Jun 13, 2006)

*Alum. Wldg.*

i dont know what kind of rig you got but yes you will have trouble welding aluminum mig if you dont have a spool gun or a set of push pull wheels in your mig gun head, although if you have alot of patience it can be accomplished with a regular mig gun, 1st you will need a teflon liner for the mig gun, 2nd, you will need to use a harder grade of alum wire such as .035 dia. 6063 or similar,3rd you will need to keep the mig gun lead as straight as possible, no coils or it will backlash,also depending on the duty cycle of your machine you may be spending alot of time waiting on the machine to cool down and reset it self, and use argon for your shielding gas, also you may need to preheat your base metal depending on thickness. i have been through this whole scenario and to me the frustration wasnt worth it so i bought a spool gun, works great.


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## iridered2003 (Dec 12, 2005)

ss mudminnow said:


> i dont know what kind of rig you got but yes you will have trouble welding aluminum mig if you dont have a spool gun or a set of push pull wheels in your mig gun head, although if you have alot of patience it can be accomplished with a regular mig gun, 1st you will need a teflon liner for the mig gun, 2nd, you will need to use a harder grade of alum wire such as .035 dia. 6063 or similar,3rd you will need to keep the mig gun lead as straight as possible, no coils or it will backlash,also depending on the duty cycle of your machine you may be spending alot of time waiting on the machine to cool down and reset it self, and use argon for your shielding gas, also you may need to preheat your base metal depending on thickness. i have been through this whole scenario and to me the frustration wasnt worth it so i bought a spool gun, works great.


yep,your right. been there,done the samething


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## 9121SS (Jun 28, 2009)

Spool gun!


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## MarshJr. (Jul 29, 2005)

spool gun is a must

they say it can be done with a regular mig, but ive never seen it work


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## Pier Pressure (Aug 30, 2009)

And a Mig machine that will run on A/C. Square wave pulse machine works awesome by someone that does it alot.


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## Delta Elite (May 28, 2011)

Ideally, you would want to tig aluminum. However, one of my clients recently designed a support coming off of an 80 ft air tank (take a look at it next time you are on 225 and Sens Rd.) out of aluminum structural shapes that did not exist. I had to fabricate the square tubing and W-Beam out of 6061.

As fate would have it, I was the only guy in our company who could heli-arc, but I have been a project manager for over 5 years and was the last guy here to qualify the WPS. That was in 1997. I couldn't believe no one could heliarc aluminum in our shop but me.

Anyway, I told them to go rent a spool gun or a Cobramatic, but the fab shop foreman didn't want to do it. He bought a full spool of wire and planned on running it through a regular Tweco gun and regular liner. I told him the aluminum was too soft and it would gunk up his liner and cause all sort of problems.

Jump ahead three days later and they called me to the floor to see the final welded product. Believe it or not, they put down over 500 inches of weld with that standard GMAW setup and did not have one problem at all.

Granted, the welds were not nearly as cosmetically appealing as they would have been with a spool gun or GTAW, but it was structurally sound nonetheless.

Moral to the story, you can successfully push aluminum consumables through a standard short arc set up. I have been fabricating steel since I was 17 years old, but I still learn new things all the time.


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## bgrantom (Oct 4, 2012)

I did it and it looked ok but i had to go to a. 045 wire and a 10 ft gun with a
055 tip and regular liner.


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## peckerwood (Jun 9, 2012)

No matter what method you use,the best results will be with super clean metal.


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