Good morning all, Ok, I just bought a Miller 180 millermatic mig w/ the new 100 spoolgun. So, since I was like a kid at Christmas w/a new toy as soon as I got home I was anxious to try welding aluminum. Oh man what a mess, I had almost everything right, except I forgot to weld in the forward direction. And the most important was the settings, were off. This is what I think will you help you a lot if you are having trouble welding aluminum.
1. Use "spray arc" transfer on anything from 14 gauge material and above. For example, you will know that you are using "spray arc" when you hear the weld being done hissing like a tire leaking air and very lil spatter. You DONT want to hear the frying bacon sound! You will be surprised how high you turn up the voltage and you will be moving kinda fast. (Example) on the Miller 180 w/the spool gun, I got spray arc with the voltage on 4 and the wire speed on 50 and a half. And a piece of aluminum that was 1/8 thick.
2. When you start your arc keep about 3/4 of inch of wire stick out and stay close to that disatnce from work piece.
3. If you use the same size tip that your wire is, here's a trick, take the tip put in your vise but not too tight and using a hack saw cut right down the middle of tip "over the wire hole" and cut down about 1/8 too 3/16 of an inch. This will help if you burn back wire in the tip to get it out. Or use 0.35 tip for 0.30wire.
4. Use straight argon with a flow of about 20cfm too 30cfm (Dont forget to turn on the gas)
5. Use a forward push technique w/about a 15 degree angle toward the opposite direction of the weld and what worked good for me was too whip forward about a 1/2 inch and then return to the edge of the last puddle and wait to see the puddle become fluid but not too long. Long welds dont seem to come out too good because the material dissipates heat so well and the mig machine cannot reduce the voltage automaticlly. About 6" too 8" long is all you can do before everything starts to get pretty damn hot....... material, gun nozzle, tip!
6. If you see a lot of black smoke on both sides of the weld your gun tip is too far away from the material or your gas is wrong. You should see lil too no smoke.
7. You should get no ball on the end of the wire but I have not had any luck doing that. I still get the ball but I cut it off before I start.
Look at the pic below, 1st weld w/ the most smoke is not spray arc then the weld at the seem is spray arc, then there is one with a crack in the middle of the welds "lower weld" material got too hot and cracked when welded, upper weld blown thru dont remeber what happened, I think first weld I tried.
Hope this helps, good luck and if anyone has any other tips to ad feel free to put it in.
Nice center line crack in the really hot weld, shown at the bottom.
Oh man you should see it from the inside, I cant believe how aluminum will crack like that. Yeah, I was trying differenet settings and I also melted the copper tip down to nothing on that one. Woops!
What size wire are You using? I usually run 3/64 4043 [unless I HAVE to run 5356] and find that I usually run a little below spray transfer. When I did use spray transfer there wasn't a ball on the end of the wire, and if You got to the end of the spool and didn't realise it the wire was stuck in the contact tube pretty well.
Hey Dave, Im using .30 4043 wire. If your getting no ball at the end of the wire using spray then your good thats what you want. Im having a liltrouble getting the cut tip instead of the ball but all else is good.
That was helpful for what I needed to do today. Thanks!
Let me how it turns out, I'm glad it was helpful.
Forum
