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I might get to tig (try to anyway) some copper at work Monday. I've got experience with steel and aluminum but never anything cooler than that. Any tips or tricks? I'm guessing DC but have no idea.
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Aug 7, 2016 00:16
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Brekelefuw posted:Actually, I want to preserve the anodisation. I have got some discs coming with anodised patterns and colours that will be used as inlay decoration. Annoyingly over-technical answer: How hot is low temp? Can you monitor the surface temperature while you braze? Anodizing dyes are rated for color fastness/resistance to UV light, heat and chemicals. After they're applied they are sealed by either a hot water bath or some first process + hot water. The quality and type of sealant will matter a lot. From what I gather, 400°F tends to be on the upper limit of fastness of the dyes. The color matters too, generally blue and reds fade very quickly (next time you get on a plane, look at how different the reds are on the things that secure the food carts) followed by yellow. "Blacks" tend to be more color fast. Also I am assuming youre using a dye anodizing process, if metal ion or some other process, this may not apply. Also the temperature differentials are fairly likely to crack the anodizing. CarForumPoster fucked around with this message at 00:29 on Aug 7, 2016 |
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Aug 7, 2016 00:27
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honda whisperer posted:I might get to tig (try to anyway) some copper at work Monday. I've got experience with steel and aluminum but never anything cooler than that. Any tips or tricks? I'm guessing DC but have no idea. have you ever welded something and gone "man i really wish this material stole all my heat like three times as fast, and also, is either solid or a free-flowing liquid rapidly leaving the weld site with no mushy middle ground" Ambrose Burnside fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Aug 7, 2016 |
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Aug 7, 2016 22:16
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So aluminium intercooler meets brazing kinda?
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Aug 7, 2016 22:50
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I've never actually TIG welded copper, just done a fair bit of hard soldering/brazing and a bit of oxyfuel welding proper. Bearing in mind that fuel-flame experience won't fully transfer over to electric welding- the extreme thermal conductivity and the lack of discrete solidus/liquidus points means a lot of your existing experience and instincts won't be of much use, and your machine + equipment will suddenly feel anaemic and will punch significantly under its normal weight. Sheet was manageable but I have no idea how daunting trying to weld copper of meaningful thickness might be.
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Aug 7, 2016 23:57
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Unrelated: every time there's a Run The Jewels show in toronto i make a chain for it. they were in town yesterday: (did most of the work on this last year, finally fixed it up + put a better chain on it)
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Aug 7, 2016 23:59
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Ambrose Burnside posted:I've never actually TIG welded copper, just done a fair bit of hard soldering/brazing and a bit of oxyfuel welding proper. Bearing in mind that fuel-flame experience won't fully transfer over to electric welding- the extreme thermal conductivity and the lack of discrete solidus/liquidus points means a lot of your existing experience and instincts won't be of much use, and your machine + equipment will suddenly feel anaemic and will punch significantly under its normal weight. Sheet was manageable but I have no idea how daunting trying to weld copper of meaningful thickness might be. This guy makes it look easy!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjKu_Mm0Hp8
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Aug 8, 2016 00:19
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He's using some low-mass cutoffs, it's an easy sell with that b/c the "whole piece gets preheated waiting for the puddle to form" factor is trivial there. I'd like to see how high he'd have to crank the amps doing the same thing on two larger 1/4" plates
Ambrose Burnside fucked around with this message at 00:40 on Aug 8, 2016 |
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Aug 8, 2016 00:29
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Brekelefuw posted:Actually, I want to preserve the anodisation. I have got some discs coming with anodised patterns and colours that will be used as inlay decoration. You can't really solder aluminum without some fairly specific solder alloys, regular solders (leadfree or not) won't work. That plus the temp concerns mean I would plan on using some sort of bonding agent rather than solder/braze/weld. honda whisperer posted:I might get to tig (try to anyway) some copper at work Monday. I've got experience with steel and aluminum but never anything cooler than that. Any tips or tricks? I'm guessing DC but have no idea. That's going to be a party, just based on thermal conductivity and the way the metal melts, like Ambrose said. And by a party I mean I'd look more at copper thermite welding (this is a thing - a very dangerous thing, even moreso than regular iron thermite, but a thing), spotwelding, capacitive discharge spotwelding, friction stir welding, etc. e: copper thermite is one of the most violent thermites on the list apparently, mostly because it produces such a large quantity of molten metal for the volume used, so it's more of a sudden explosion of liquid copper droplets than anything else. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j38bubZFl6U kastein fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Aug 9, 2016 |
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Aug 9, 2016 19:18
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If you're trying to get rust off something, does it really matter what kind of acid you use? For example, toilet bowl cleaner is HCL and not too expensive. But on the other hand, I worry about causing an unseen change that makes something weak where it wouldn't otherwise be. Are there any shortcuts for a guy sick of wire-wheeling?
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Aug 10, 2016 01:22
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DreadLlama posted:If you're trying to get rust off something, does it really matter what kind of acid you use? For example, toilet bowl cleaner is HCL and not too expensive. But on the other hand, I worry about causing an unseen change that makes something weak where it wouldn't otherwise be. I dunno about a shortcut, but you can always use electrolysis.
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Aug 10, 2016 07:28
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Soaking in white vinegar is the cheapest/easiest. Electrolysis is better but more of a ball ache to set up.
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Aug 10, 2016 08:30
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Considering swapping in my old Kemppi rectifier for a modern Kemppi Minarc Evo 150 or 180 with both stick and TIG functions (lift-TIG start). Is lift-TIG a good way to go or is it HF start or bust?
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Aug 10, 2016 09:05
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Alot of industrial TIG welding in the field on mild steel is done with scratch start and no foot pedal. That said I've never personally ever tried it because HF start is awesome and I've never TIG welded professionally. When I purchased a TIG machine it was a requirement for me.
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Aug 10, 2016 12:01
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What I have as a requirement is that I will be able to TIG braze with it because that's one of the reasons I'd bother swapping out my current machine at all, tig brazing just looks so useful for all kinds of home DIY'ing and working on car sheet metal. I am not sure if brazing requires any fancy functions or not. The EVO 180 can have a foot pedal (or other remote) attached to it I think. Edit: Thinking over this and perhaps it's better to invest the money in a used, but more professional, dedicated TIG rig, I saw some ads for refurbished 3-phase kemppis with HF start earlier. Then I get to keep my nice old stick welder too. His Divine Shadow fucked around with this message at 13:47 on Aug 10, 2016 |
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Aug 10, 2016 12:08
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I remember reading somewhere about inline auto-fluxing with oxyfuel equipment, where one of the gases (or possibly both post-mixing?) gets percolated through a water-boric acid solution-filled chamber that acts as a flashback arrestor alongside making the flame self-fluxing on things other than steel. I remember it being associated with a weirder fuel, hydrogen I think. Has anyone heard of such a thing or is this some weird half-remembered dream on my end?
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Aug 10, 2016 15:52
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His Divine Shadow posted:What I have as a requirement is that I will be able to TIG braze with it because that's one of the reasons I'd bother swapping out my current machine at all, tig brazing just looks so useful for all kinds of home DIY'ing and working on car sheet metal. Car stuff is almost always better done with mig. This is because you usually need a free hand to be able to tack whatever in place. I had a tig for home car work as well as other projects and generally would've been better off with a mig for the car projects.
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Aug 11, 2016 01:10
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CarForumPoster posted:Car stuff is almost always better done with mig. This is because you usually need a free hand to be able to tack whatever in place. I had a tig for home car work as well as other projects and generally would've been better off with a mig for the car projects. My dad has a pretty serious 3ph driven mig if I need that. The TIG just seems more allround useful than the MIG, even if the MIG comes ahead on autobody stuff it should still be doable for small repairs.
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Aug 11, 2016 04:21
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Stumbled on this for 500 euros http://www.nettikone.com/esab/power-tic-200/1540574 ESAB Power TIG 200 amps. 3-phase driven. Has HF and lift start functions for TIG, and slope settings, and stick welding too. Only thing it doesn't have is AC which I don't value that highly. No bottle or regulator, says otherwise in working condition. Even found the manual http://manuals.esab.com/private/Library/InstructionManuals/0457%20305%20201%20GB.pdf?noCache=7055 His Divine Shadow fucked around with this message at 09:24 on Aug 11, 2016 |
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Aug 11, 2016 09:19
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His Divine Shadow posted:My dad has a pretty serious 3ph driven mig if I need that. The TIG just seems more allround useful than the MIG, even if the MIG comes ahead on autobody stuff it should still be doable for small repairs. Straight up, a tig is no where near as useful as you think. Everyone loves tig because the welds can look so nice, but in all honesty they are a pain in the rear end to use if you don't know what you are doing. Mig is the easiest to learn in my opinion, and best all rounder.
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Aug 11, 2016 13:35
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I would think that's the stick welder. Which I have and like.
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Aug 11, 2016 13:40
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The non-professional welders who come in here and recommend a MIG for stuff other then sheet metal make me cringe. Yes, most industrial structrual welding is done with a wire fed process... in a controlled environment that has all variables accounted for by a welding engineer. Most hobbyists using MIG on poo poo besides sheetmetal are producing welds that never have any hope whatsoever of passing a real destructive test. The people who say MIG is easy usually don't know what the different transfer modes are or how to select the correct consumables and machine settings for a given application, and just use whatever wire comes with their machine and blindly turn dials until the bead looks passable. If you aren't a car guy, farmer, or production shop and want to do general hobby welding because you are a metal geek, then Stick and TIG are your best bets for versatility to produce quality welds in a variety of situations.
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Aug 11, 2016 16:38
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one of the most beautiful things I ever seent was a dude who dragged a bigass steel art piece he was assembling out of the shop and onto the driveway during a windy day running non-fluxcore and proceeded to weld for an hour without checking anything and was baffled when every single weld failed trying to drag the thing the 6 feet back through the bay door "too nice a day to work inside", he said repeatedly as many people asked him what he was doing and if he could also stop arc flashing everybody Ambrose Burnside fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Aug 11, 2016 |
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Aug 11, 2016 20:52
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Offered 350€ for the ESAB TIG welder, don't dare offer no more for something I cannot check out in person. Sometimes I'd like the comfort of buying new stuff. But in that case I couldn't afford HF, slope or pulsing. It would be the Minarc Evo 180 with Lift-arc and foot pedal capability only. Basically a stick welder with some TIG capacity. I dunno sometimes. If I buy that I will probably find the used deal of the century right after.
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Aug 12, 2016 08:16
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Pagan posted:First problem I ran into was the shell of the forge flexed a lot, and bent under the press. For future reference, welding flanges around the outside of each end of the tube will make it hold its circular shape. If it collapses or bends in the middle, then welding a strip of sheet metal sticking up along the length of it will stiffen it up. e: 
Eugene V. Dubstep fucked around with this message at 09:45 on Aug 12, 2016 |
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Aug 12, 2016 09:41
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AbsentMindedWelder posted:The non-professional welders who come in here and recommend a MIG for stuff other then sheet metal make me cringe. Yes, most industrial structrual welding is done with a wire fed process... in a controlled environment that has all variables accounted for by a welding engineer. Each to their own I guess, as a professional welder I use a MIG welder for probably 90% of my work, and the majority of that is working off the back of a truck welding on site repairing heavy equipment. I have never understood the hate that MIG welding get here, I can only assume comes from using under powered 110v welders (we don't have these in Australia). Personally I would say that operator skill is more of a concern than the weld process, if you are going to take the time to learn how to do a proper tig weld or a proper stick weld, why not a proper mig weld?
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Aug 12, 2016 14:03
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I just don't want another MIG welder when my dad has one, a 400v 3-phase model to boot. In my book I got MIG covered if i need it. No point in both of us having a MIG, and everyone and his dog has a MIG anyway so they're not hard to come by. I also think that for a lot of the tiny poo poo I often find myself wanting to deal with, a TIG Is best. It's also a nice clean setup. I really do think a TIG will serve me a lot better, I also have tendencies to do gunsmithing some times, where a TIG is a most useful tool.
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Aug 12, 2016 14:10
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Go for it then man, get some advice on setting up the machine and practice putting down some welds.
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Aug 12, 2016 14:23
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yumbo posted:Each to their own I guess, as a professional welder I use a MIG welder for probably 90% of my work, and the majority of that is working off the back of a truck welding on site repairing heavy equipment. In the US anyway, typical low-buck welders are poo poo, and take a lot of screwing around to produce good results rather than results that just look good to uneducated people. Had my brother-in-law in to help with some race car fab stuff once - he's a journeyman steamfitter, certified for all sorts of different stuff, but so used to using good equipment that it took ages for him to get used to the boxes we had because it was so underpowered and all the controls were pretty drat approximate. Not that it's impossible to get good MIG welders here, just that probably 95% of MIG welders sold truly aren't really suited to more than sheetmetal.
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Aug 12, 2016 14:54
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ESAB seller guy isn't responding, guess he didn't find my offer agreeable. Looking at a Kemppi Minarc 300 TIG, 1990s era 3-phase model. HF start & slope functions, 280A max output, 170A highest for 100% duty cycle. 500 euros for said machine. I got an offer for 1500 euros inc vat and shipping for a brand new kemppi evo 200 with CK17 handle and adapters. Looking around the net it seems we have different torches in europe, and the norm is to not use a pedal. We have torches with fatter grips and switches built in instead. Seems most people who have tried both prefer the slimmer US style. Either with foot pedal or a 3rd party switch tacked on.
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Aug 15, 2016 11:24
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When you are doing out of position welding or have to contort your body, then the finger tip control is nice. Otherwise I too prefer the slimmer torch (I like water cooled) and a foot pedal. BTW, I'm jealous of your 3 phase power.
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Aug 15, 2016 11:39
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It's been an extremely useful thing to have yeah. The seller finally responded, turns out it's a company called Hemax welding and it's their old machines they're selling off so who knows if they're worn out or not. The kicker is the price 500€ is excluding vat... so the price for me would be 620€ + freight.... Now I am not so sure anymore. They'll test the machine that it works before sending it out they say.
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Aug 16, 2016 06:52
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hvqb6IBrKgw my CNCed Taig mill, she lives
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Aug 16, 2016 16:58
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hinerds did nothing wrong
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Aug 16, 2016 17:19
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Was out padding beads last night and set fire to the table. Wish I had an all metal table but you can't have everything at once! Really loving windy too, like almost storm levels. Only a stick welder would've worked in this situation.
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Aug 17, 2016 07:34
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Ambrose Burnside posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hvqb6IBrKgw You'll want to choke up that tool a bit there. It's got a lot of deflection.
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Aug 17, 2016 09:49
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Ambrose Burnside posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hvqb6IBrKgw How hard was that to do, incidentally? I keep kicking around the idea of doing one of those for engine porting.
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Aug 17, 2016 14:10
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Not supremely hard, but I also paid more than I could have to buy a 4/5ths-ready kit from a dude who's very well-known for providing excellent support for his products if you get stuck (soigeneris.com). I couldn't have set it up from assembled components like a lot of hobbyists do, I don't have the electronics or computer wizardry know-how. Also i'm not actually, u know, machining things yet, just reaching the baseline of "successfully set machine up and got it networked w controller and computer". actually making things is a whooole 'nother kettle of fish I'm not at yet, this thing doesn't have a shop table home yet and I'd want an enclosure first anyways Ambrose Burnside fucked around with this message at 19:09 on Aug 17, 2016 |
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Aug 17, 2016 19:04
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New welder bought, then. Just sold something else I wasn't using for about the same amount of money. Guess I won't be tigging just yet though. It'll be interesting to see how the stick mode performs with 3ph rectification vs 1ph.
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Aug 18, 2016 12:26
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You should notice a much smoother, nicer arc. It will also sound different too. You should now have no problem using carbons for air-carbon arc gouging!
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Aug 18, 2016 12:43
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