I bought my TIG and self taught. The theory: noble gas keeps oxygen from ******* up the weld. Current heats up metal. You want the metals to be melted. That's pretty much it.

**** with the settings to see what they do.

Doing what the internet expert say typically doesn't work for me. Neither do the 'auto' settings on the machine.

 

The fuel rails I've played with are clear anodized. Welding to any sort of coating on any metal is not ideal.

Much better to tap them for ORB fittings anyway.

 

I am not guessing when I weld. The bung was a piece of crap.

 

Its a finicky 2000 series aluminum usually. not for beginners.

 

I got it to work and it definitely made me a better welder for doing it. The amount of heat I had to put into it was ridiculous and then I had to touch up some cracks because of the heat. I hear cast aluminum is like that.

 

http://www.ckworldwide.com/Form%2011...al%20Guide.pdf

I'll throw this out as advice - Go to your local welding shop, see if they know anyone that offers a non-technical class. You're not looking to get certified. Our local one started a weekend course they run every couple of months that I was really keen to sit in for TIG - but in the year it took them to get set up I think I've learned most of what they could teach me (or I'm peak Mount Stupid in the dunning kruger zone). I did start out with a $200 craigslist 125v miller MIG, and that thing was absolutely a blast to run - from seam stitching my body to making a decent bracket. But having the ability to do Aluminum with an alphatig has absolutely opened up opportunities.

 

Brought this up to my wife and she had a good suggestion. The only place that offers classes up here is at NMU, local college, but my wife is a grad student and said I might be able to get a free class as an audit. Sounds like it couldn't hurt to get a free class. That will definitely be something I'll check it out!

Sav all of that info was so awesome! I'll have to save that for later!

 

Also off topic:
Mattrussel, awesome job on that radiator support bar! You two did a sick job on that. I've followed your build thread and you've helped me in that past. You saw a need and made an awesome product, hopefully I'll be able to pick up one of those before too long.

 

To beat a dead horse here, tons of practice and there are lots of great resources on youtube. One that hasn't been mentioned is Instagram as well. There's a pretty large welding/fabrication community on instagram and a lot of them either slip tricks and tips in without realizing it or have videos with things that they've found to help out. Seriously, there's a lot to learn from both that community and I've picked up a ton from them.

But at the end of the day, it's just practice. And doing things right. Prep is such a major thing that people overlook and I'm still finding better ways to prep things after 5 years of welding.

Last note: I also found I really gained a better understanding of welding after tig. For me, once I started tig welding, my mig welding improved too. I understood what was going on with the puddle and how to control things better.

 

Starting on big metal makes it a bit easier too. You get a few more seconds to fiddle around before things go wrong. You really get to see the puddle mature and grow.

 

This. If you're an absolute beginner, I'd recommend starting with a stick welder:
1) They're cheap(er)
2) Fewer settings to **** with
3) They force you to learn to control your speed/puddle early on. If you become a proficient stick welder first, learning MIG becomes much easier

 

I figure this is a better place than the buying a welder thread.

Can you guys yell at me for what I am doing wrong? Working with aluminized steel/regular steel exhaust pipe. Lincoln 120V hobby welder with flux core, set to B voltage and a hair over 3 for wire feed. Sometimes I get nice steady bacon sizzling, other times the arc pops in and out for no reason I can find. A voltage does nothing for some reason (maybe a lockout, maybe it doesn't work with flux core? No idea). C voltage range just blows through faster than I can control on this stuff since I am doing some gap filling. Used a smashed copper pipe as a backer for helping fill some of the larger gaps. I have about 45min total on time for welding experiance at this point. So I know I have a lot of learning to do.

Don't yell about the pipe fab, my friend is doing that, I am just doing the welding. This is our first major exhaust fab project.

 

I assumed the arc pop on my HF cheapo MIG was due to the wire not feeding smoothly, because HF cheapo MIG. My dad's ancient Daytona MIG (cheapo at the time) does it every now and then. He always bitched about it but never experienced a real crap MIG like mine. The nice Lincoln at work was smoooth as butter the 15 minutes i used it.

 

Did you clean the aluminized part off the steel so you had good material to work with? I would make sure you did that for both the ground location and where you are welding. I am assuming that you didnt have the nice sizzling sound on that weld and it was in and out making an arc right?

 

We ground down the aluminized parts, yes. Same where the ground clamp was. I could get a nice sizzling for short bit, but then the are would start popping in and out again. I was also filling in a fairly large gap and using a coper pipe as a backer.

 

Make sure the nozzle tip is the correct size for the wire you're using, and make sure the machine is feeding smoothly.

 

If you need a backer for that job, you are doing it very wrong. It also looks like you are a but low on the heat. You wont be able to continuous weld stuff like that. Millions of start and stop. Is the only way to fix that mess.

 

Any time you change voltage taps/dial settings and see no change on a 120v welder, I look at the input power. You running an extension cord? What size breaker is the circuit you're running off of? Any power loss on the input side will drastically drop the machine output and you'll be beating yourself trying to chase it.

You sure you have it set for straight (electrode negative) polarity (assuming you're talking a self-shielded wire)?

 

Yes, it is set for DCEN. Voltage A (the lowest) just doesn't work at all. Doesn't feed the wire, no arc, nothing. Fairly sure something is wrong with that setting. That said, B seems to be the correct setting anyway.

I need a backer cause I suck. Some of those gaps are on the order of 4-5mm wide. Got some 0.030 wire and some new tips, so I will set that up and give it a try. Also some tig gloves cause I got sick of having to take a glove off to trim the excess wire....

 

Good call on the extension cord, I ran into that problem on my shitty 120v MIG.