Anything welding

Not bad. Color me impressed.

I so want to try out the new HF Vulcan machines. They are not in the same category of the original Chicago Electric craptastic welders.

 

This was the machine it was done with

 

I don't do a lot of aluminum MIG welding. Mostly iron.

Feel free to critique my welds. Does it look like excessive soot around my welds?

 

I have done zero mig al welding but i think i saw where u should keep the trigger slightly depressed at the end, enough for gas to continue to flow but the wire stops. Something something, aluminium solidifies differently than steel and the gas flow somethin something more.

 

Depends on just how long the Aluminum has been exposed to the world .

The older it is the worse it gets .

 

Sounds good. From the little I've been reading in the last hour, it sounds like soot us unavoidable, but can be reduced some. It also hurts nothing.

 

That's excessive IMO. Make sure your shielding gas (are you using 100% argon?) is working and has plenty of flow (like 35 CFH) and make sure to push rather than drag with a short arc. The smut is due to the magnesium, either in the electrode (5356 is high in Mg, which I assume you're using) or the base metal, combining with available oxides. You can try 4043 wire, that might reduce soot, 4043 doesn't have magnesium.

 

I'll dial up the Argon. Im around 15. I am using 4043.

 

With Aluminum, you must clean your material very well before welding. Wire wheel in a cordless drill works well, then clean as best as you can with Acetone prior to welding. Make sure your gas is up and slow down. Then do it again. Aluminum = clean clean clean. I stall when I come back towards the puddle before moving forward with each motion.
Aluminum dissipates heat very fast, best to not have your material on anything that will speed up the heat dissipation. New fancy inverter machines will have settings for cleaning as the burn, but these machines are very expensive. Syncrowave 250dx or any dynasty machines have all this. My machine is a Lincoln precision

$869 tig225 X 225 amp IGBT AC DC tig/stick welder with pulse CK17 flex torch and cable 3 year warranty

tig225, it does not have all those bells and whistles, but I am just fine with what I have.

 

Lol. Im not cleaning much before I weld on this project. I'll wire wheel after I'm done.

 

I see people asking about welders in this forum, just want to add my 2 cents. Take it how ever you want.

Best bang for the buck in a mig machine is the Hobart iron man 230. Half the cost of a Miller 252, better warranty and does not have motherboards and inverter technology to foul up. I have both, and will put my iron man up against any 250 amp machine.

Tig machine. Again, best bang for the buck is Lincoln precision

$869 tig225 X 225 amp IGBT AC DC tig/stick welder with pulse CK17 flex torch and cable 3 year warranty

tig225 with cart kit. Add a water cooler and your good to go with a solid machine that will not give you any headaches for a long time. If money is no problem, the syncrowave 250dx is the machine, if your stupid rich, get a dynasty400 with all the bells and whistles.

New inverter machines are powerful and small, they have come a long way, but they all have lots of electronics in them now that does not like a dirty shop with grinding dust floating around. Very important to keep inverter machines clean, and in a clean environment when in use or you are going to have expensive repairs on them.

Plasma machines, I am biased and have always used hypotherm and have never had any problems.

I am strictly speaking from my experience, others experience may vary.

Lastly, when buying an machine, always get a machine that is capable of welding more then what you want. You will outgrow your machine in time.

Cheers.

 

Try it, it will make a big difference. But what do I know

 

No black soot. Pic taken after removed from jig and placed on the floor with no cleaning

 

Impressive. That was welded with a spool gun?

 

This is very good advice. In not a fan of the machines with more dials and switches that you will ever use. My 20 year old mm250, which is an analog machine us much easier to adjust than the mm 252 that I use often at work. Dials are much easier than digital readout. If someone gave me a mm252, I could not sell it fast enough so I could buy a Hobart.

 

Don't get me wrong, the 252 is a great and powerful machine, and using a tapped machine does not bother me. You get used to using them both, it's just that a tapped machine will outlast a inverter machine any day of the week.

 

That was a spool gun. When building truss, I tack it all together with the tig, then spool gun it. It would take way to long to tig up all that truss. In my work, I mainly only use the tig to tack aluminum, and to do stainless work. I don't do offroad or car stuff anymore, if I did, I would use the tig more.

 

I guess it all comes down to what you feel comfortable with.

At my age I was a die Hard Transformer Rectifier machine person to be honest I was starting to weld just as Mig and Tig were within the reach of the smaller companies and welding shops

Now I love my Inverter machines and working on them know when the fail it can be so very expensive but there are ways to keep the costs some what limited

I must say if you don`t need all the options or take the time to understand them seems most times the users manual gets given to the purchasing agent never seen by the people on the floor . Most employees who won`t take the time to download the manual on their time.

Then you get into that some machines just work so much better on 3 phase although they are claimed to work on both single and 3 phase

If I had 3 phase at my Shop I would come up with an excuse to buy a Miller Pipe Worx 400 only @ $12,000.00

Then the other thing if it is a Hobby or if it feeds the family is a big difference

Hobart machines are a very good deal I have not owned one Since Hobart broke up

 

Miller owns Hobart. The ironman 230 and the miller 212 are the same machine wearing different clothes. The Hobart warranty is better then the miller warranty.

I can't afford a 10k tig welder.

The advantage of the inverter machine is that it is a powerful machine that takes less power and comes in a very small package.

Put a inverter machine in a shop environment with grinding dust and particles floating around, and it will have a failure long before a transformer machine.

Anyone looking for tips, watch Jody welding tips and tricks on YouTube. The guy knows what he is doing and explains things in a way that you understand what he is doing.

Now shut up and weld.

 

We need to distinguish professional machines from consumer machines. There's no reason an inverter machine will be any more or less reliable than a transformer machine but there are design criteria and price points that differentiate their reliability.

There is truth that things like LCD displays are more vulnerable to environments but overall IGBTs aren't any less rugged than a transformer (which also has very large SCRs in the rectifier, which are necessary to make the output a true square wave). Both machine types have lots of microelectronics that need to be made immune to a shop. A Precision TIG has a microprocessor on its main board anyway, so it's not really any less complex than anything else but you don't get the benefit of a modern switched mode power supply with things like adjustable frequency.

I have access to several Precision TIG 275 and 375 machines and the high frequency circuit can fail, which is why Lincoln goes to the lengths they do to pot the PCBs and seal them. But the Lincoln G3909-1 (now G4763-1 I think, the main PCB for a Precision TIG) costs alone as much as a whole Square Wave TIG 200 welder, so the quality and workmanship is going to be better as a result.

Indeed.