Welding - Beginner Guide to Aluminum

How to Weld Aluminum Cylinder Head article here.

learn to weld aluminum, but have little no experience in welding aluminum, or

even in welding in general.

very simplistic and under-informative

learn to weld aluminum faster than they would have otherwise.

What do you equipment do you need?

1. A TIG (GTAW) welder. Most sources say a TIG (Tungsten Inert Gas) welder,

also called a GTAW (Gas Tungsten Arc Welder), is the best method of

welding aluminum. I’ve heard aluminum can also be welded with a MIG

welder or a stick welder or even a with a gas torch. Since I’ve only used the

TIG for aluminum, that’s what I’ll be writing about. TIG welders are fairly

expensive and it’s hard to justify buying even the lowest quality units

unless you are making money with your welding. The more expensive units

($6000) have a bunch of features that make doing high quality welding on

aluminum possible. We have a bottom-of-the-line ($2500) Hobart welder

that is described as good for the hobbyist or farmer. As tempting as it was

to blame the machine while I was making charred bits of twisted metal
 instead of neatly welded joints, I came to realize that adequate welds can

be made, even with a cheapo machine. What do you get when you spend

the extra money on a welder? More amperage (meaning the ability to weld

thicker metal), water cooling (I don’t know what advantage this provides,

but the gas hood glows orange on our air cooled unit when it’s at

maximum output, and it’s only 165A), square wave AC (this allow grinding

a ceriated tungsten to a point for a more stable arc), frequency adjustment,

and adjustment of the ratio of positive to negative current for better

cleaning or penetration. Since my machine has none of these features, I

can’t offer any advice on how to make use of them.

2. Good welding gloves. I have crappy welding gloves and the painful

blisters to prove it.

3. A good welding helmet. I hear the gold tinted auto darkening helmets are

the best. I have a $20 helmet with a tiny window that falls off my head

when I flip it down.

4. Argon gas. Mixes will not work for aluminum with the exception of an

Argon / Helium mix. Don’t take the tank from you MIG welder to use on

your TIG welder – it won’t work at all. You will just make a bunch of burnt

metal and soot.

recommended. There is a good chart at http://www.tinmantech.com on

which rod to use for which alloys as well as a ton of excellent metalworking

and aluminum welding information. At this point I don’t have any idea how

to tell one alloy from another, and I'm not doing any mission critical

welding, so don't worry about it. The 4043 has been working well for me.

6. A dedicated stainless steel brush that you only use for aluminum. Write

“aluminum” on it so it doesn’t get used for anything else.

7. A metal bench would be nice. I don’t have one. Stopping your weld to put

out a fire is a pain in the ass. This happens to me all the time.

8. A squirt bottle with water. This is not for cooling the work, it’s for putting

out small fires that aren’t big enough to use a fire extinguisher on. Cooling

aluminum rapidly may cause it to crack in or near the weld.

9. A fire extinguisher might not be a bad idea if you don’t want to get fired

for burning down the shop.

10. This next one is VERY important: a heavy long sleeve cotton work shirt.

TIG welding produces more UV radiation than any other welding process.

The first time I used the TIG I was wearing a tee shirt. I used the welder for

10 min if even that. The front of my biceps and a spot at the bottom of my
 neck were painfully burned with blisters and peeling skin. I just takes a few

minutes to do some serious burning.

11. 11. Clamps or Vise Grips or whatever your going to use to hold your work

in place and some blocks or bars of aluminum or copper to use as heat

sinks.

That’s enough of the shopping list. On with the useful tips

Tip #1 -- Clean the aluminum. This is the most important tip I have. I read this

in several places before I began to practice welding, but it didn’t seem so sink

in and I wasted a lot of metal by trying to weld two pieces of dirty aluminum

together. ALUMINUM THAT LOOKS BRAND NEW AND CLEAN IS ACTUALLY DIRTY.

IT’S NOT LIKE STEEL.

Here are some of the signs that your aluminum is dirty.

 A wandering arc -You can’t get a puddle started without burning through

or distorting the metal

 Your filler won’t blend into the puddle, instead it rolls into a difficult to

re-melt ball.

 The aluminum seems to have surface tension, like beads of water on a

waxed surface.
 When trying to join 2 pieces the edges curl away from each other and

form an even bigger gap.

Here's what's happening: Aluminum quickly forms an more or less invisible

coating of aluminum oxide. Aluminum oxide melts at three times the

temperature of aluminum. When you try to weld uncleaned aluminum, the

aluminum under the aluminum oxide coating will melt but the aluminum oxide

coating will stay solid and act as a membrane, much like a water balloon. When

you finally succeed in penetrating the coating, the very runny aluminum inside

will flow out all at once, much like a bursting water balloon.

Here’s how I prep the aluminum for welding.

 First, I spray the aluminum with acetone. Don't use brake cleaner unless

it's 100% acetone. If you need convincing, check this out --

http://www.brewracingframes.com/id75.htm Thanks for the tip Andrew!

 Then, I rinse the aluminum in water, just in case there's any nasty

residue. The aluminum should be completely dry before welding, including all

of the nooks and crannies.

 Then, I use a stainless steel brush (make sure the brush is stainless, I've

read this is important) to scrub the aluminum shiny clean around the area to be

welded.
Some articles I've read suggest that the aluminum should be scrubbed in one

direction only to avoid working contaminants into the aluminum. I don't always

follow this rule and I haven't noticed any problems stemming from it, but I'm

not working on anything too critical and I'm far from an expert. I've also read

that 3M Scotchbrite pads are a good way to prep aluminum. If you do not weld

on the aluminum immediately after cleaning, you should give it a touch up

cleaning before you start to weld. I've read eight hours exposure after cleaning

is the maximum acceptable without re-cleaning.

Tip #2 -- Clamp your work to a heatsink made of copper or aluminum

whenever possible. Aluminum transmits heat very well. Once the area you

trying to weld gets hot enough to melt, the rest of the work is likely to be so

hot that it's shrinking and warping. Using a heat sink under the area being

welded will absorb some of the heat and help keep the work from warping.

Tip #3 -- Preheat before welding. This makes it a LOT easier to weld aluminum.

This is not a subject that is without controversy. The issue is that some

aluminum is heat treated, and by heating and cooling heat treated aluminum it

will get softer. I've read opinions ranging from "heat treated aluminum should

never be preheated" and "preheating is a crutch for inexperienced welders", to

the opposite extreme, "aluminum should always be preheated to prevent

cracking". Recommended preheating temperatures range from 275 deg. F, to

500 deg. F. I suspect that many of these opinions are correct in their own

contexts. The proper procedure likely varies for a welding a space shuttle door
in a vacuum chamber and welding a cracked cylinder head. One thing I know

for sure is welding thicker pieces of aluminum with our 165A welder without

preheating is impossible. I once tried to weld two pieces of 8 mm thick

aluminum together without preheating The result were a very shallow and weak

weld, a circuit breaker that tripped twice and the welder overheated and shut

down after every two inches welded. I don't have an oven handy, so I use a

propane torch aimed at the heat sink I clamp the work to and an infrared

thermometer to tell when it's hot enough. I usually can't get the work any hotter

than 350 deg., so that's the temperature I use. I've considered getting a cheap

used electric oven or an electric hot plate but haven't yet. I don't use the torch

directly on the work. I don't know if it would cause a problem or not, I feel more

comfortable heating the heat sink instead.

Tip #4 -- If the tungsten gets contaminated, stop welding and fix it. When the

tungsten gets touches the weld pool or the filler, the arc becomes unstable and

the weld quality goes way down. This happens to me a lot, unfortunately. The

best method for fixing this is to remove the tungsten, lay it on a flat surface

with the contaminated part hanging over the edge, hit the contaminated part of

the tungsten (it will snap right off), reinstall the tungsten, change the polarity to

DCEP (direct current electrode positive), strike an arc on some scrap metal to

re-ball the tungsten, switch back to AC high, and you're ready to weld again. By

the way, KEEP YOUR GLOVES ON WHILE YOU DO THIS! Otherwise you gonna

have a nasty burn. This only takes about 30 seconds once you've done it a few

times.
 Tip #5 -- Fit the parts together as tightly as possible leaving no gaps. When

using a MIG welder, I've found it fairly easy to fill gaps between the two pieces

of steel being welded. However, I've found it very hard to do this while welding

aluminum with the TIG. The heat from the TIG is very localized. When there is a

gap, and heat is applied to the metal on one side, the metal pools on that side,

but metal on the other side stays solid. You can alternate from side to side to

get both sides to pool, but when I do this, I usually end up with a wider gap

than when I started. The only way I've found to fill a gap is to "slop" a glob of

filler across the gap, then work on the filler until it melts into both sides, then

build off of the filler. This is hard to do. You can save a lot of time by using a

file or die grinder and making the part fit together better before you start

welding. The tighter the pieces are pressed together and the fewer the gaps,

the easier the welding is.

Tip #6 -- A few "rules of thumb" for base settings

 Use one amp per .001" of material thickness. Set the amperage a higher

than the maximum you expect to use and use the foot pedal to back it down.

 Use pure tungsten for aluminum if you have a cheaper (non-square wave)

welder like me.

 Use a 2% ceriated tungsten ground to a point if you have a more

expensive (square wave) welder

Use a 3/32" pure tungsten for 60 to 130 amps

Use a 1/8" pure tungsten for 100 to 180 amps

Use 15 to 20 CFH Argon flow

 Use a filler rod size equal to the tungsten size. Adjust the tungsten to

project from the hood a distance roughly equal to the diameter of the tungsten.

 The arc length should be roughly equal to the diameter of the tungsten.

The first 3 tips were my major breakthroughs while learning to weld. They were

the things I wished somebody had told me before I began my frustrating

experimentation. There are, of course, many other things to know about

welding aluminum, but there are many more complete articles available on the

Internet. Follow the links below for some of my favorites.