MIG Welding Aluminium w Argon tutorial needed.

[crack]

as the title says, i'm lookong for a tutorial for mig welding aluminium. does anyone have or know of one?

thanks

craig

[wms]

http://www.millerwelds.com/education...pamphlets.html

About half way down page..

[Genguy]

A few more tips from the same site:
http://www.millerwelds.com/education...articles10.php

What I don't see mentioned is to use a teflon liner in your mig. The Aluminum wire will bind in the steel liners. You also have to keep the gun lead stretched out as straight as possible while welding. If your going to be doing a bunch of aluminum, a spool gun for your mig is the way to go. If your always doing round tubing or light stuff, tig is preferable. I use straight argon for shield with aluminum, some use argon/helium mixture but I have never tried that.

[crack]

thanks heaps guys. keep them coming. i am trying to get as much info as possible before i start welding. my bosses aren't convinced that mig welding aluminium is a good thing. i know tig is far superior but for the basic stuff i am looking to do i think mig will be fine.

thanks again for the responses. keep them coming

craig

[mxtras]

Dig around on the Miller site and check out the Hobart forum also.

Unless you are doing a LOT of welding (production work) I would NOT recommend MIG. MIG'ing aluminum works well under very specific conditions. Believe me - I spent a LOT of time and a lot of money trying to make this work for my production and it was all a waste of time and cash. I even had a welding expert from Miller come to my facility from Corporate Headquarters to help get things right, but I was not satified and ended up buying a very nice TIG. I can TIG almost as quickly as I can MIG and there is NO post-weld clean-up which actually makes the TIG process faster than the MIG. MIG does very good on higher amperage requirements like fillet welds on material at least 3/16" thick or greater, but even then there are a lot of issues with cold starts and there is nothing that makes sense that you can do about it. Additionally - if you are welding different configurations (lap, butt, fillet) you will find that you have to constantly change your settings for each set of conditions - the process is very, very picky. When you get it right for a set of conditions, it will do fine. Also - MIG works better on 5000 series aluminum than it does on 6000 series. Forget about doing butt joints on anything less than 1/4 with a MIG.

With the right equipment, the right set-up and some practice it is not all that difficult but there are more disadvantages than advantages unless you have a very high end machine running on three phase power which creates a more stable arc. It will be a big waste of time and money without the right equipment.

Check out the forums and search.

Scott

[dsmdude]

I agree. I spent alot of time and money trying to get MIG to work on aluminum with little sucess. The welds on 1/4 and thicker materials held but looked like bird ****. Anything thinner didn't work at all. In the end I realized aluminum work is nothing like steel. It takes 10x the patience and skill to weld and work with plus about 20x the money in equiptment. You can't "get by" with anything and basicly you have to have the best of all equiptment and consumables to get the job done satisfactory.

[mxtras]

One basic rule for migging aluminum - push, don't pull.

Scott

[motomitch1]

I have to agree with what everyones saying unless your going to be welding 1"and 2" thick plates. With tig you will have to do a lot of preheating to keep from blow off the end of your tungsten.

MIG is the way to go on the really thick stuff.