aluminum welding question

[John Dol]

So I'm knee deep in my third round of dash design. After receiving an english dash with my kit, then designing with a Chrysler 200 dash top I'm now back to using aluminum in an original design. Coming out pretty nice but now need to weld the dash hump as I do not have an english wheel to my disposal. So after a trip to HD for aluminum welding wire and a quick read up on line I was ready to do some test welds on a scrap piece.
I have a Hobart handler 135, According to the instruction to weld aluminum the pressure lever on the feed wheel needs to be set at 2 and the wire feed speed at 90. However everytime I'm getting the wire through the gun and put the tip on it jams up at the feed wheel in the cabinet. Adjusted the pressure lever up, then down with the same results.
Any recommendations?

Thank you,

John

[michael everson]

Pretty sure you need a gun that feeds the wire right at the tip.
Mike

[Jacob McCrea]

John,

Here is a thread on the Welding Web forum addressing this issue:

http://weldingweb.com/showthread.php?45699-Welding-aluminum-w-Hobart-Handler-135-Wire-keeps-getting-bunched-up-Any-tips

The bottom line is that the aluminum wire is too soft to reliably feed through the length of a mig gun cable. Hence the spool gun, with very short wire travel/low friction. I just skimmed the thread, but some apparently had success by drilling out the tip a little and keeping the gun cable straight to reduce friction. Hope this helps.

[John Dol]

Maybe one of the pieces of advise mentioned in that thread would be best on my end. Finding a shop, since it's a one time deal, to do it for me. Will have to see if there's one in this small town!

John

[Jacob McCrea]

That may be your best course of action. For what it's worth, I have the lower end Miller spool gun. I hooked up the spool gun once and tried to weld 1/16" aluminum to make some brackets. I was successful, but there was nothing pretty about the welds. The best I can say is that I successfully joined two pieces of aluminum. The learning curve didn't seem terrible, but it was clearly different from welding steel with the same machine. I would need a lot of practice before I would risk damaging that aluminum dash piece.

[John Dol]

Jacob,

Yeah that's where I'm at with that too. See what I can find around here.

John

[2FAST4U]

Pretty sure you need a gun that feeds the wire right at the tip.
Mikeyep. That's the better way

[loeffler1]

John
As an old Navy Yard welder, what you are experiencing is referred to as birdcaging. The wire is too soft to even adjust the feed wheels to allow it to feed correctly especilly through the length of the cable. A hand held gun with the spool built in is one way to weld aluminum but usually leaves a lot to be desired and the welds are usually mediocre. Find someone with a TIG (tungsten inert gas process) machine and have them do it. You are in a farm area, most farm equipment repair shops will have a TIG outfit. It is somewhat akin to gas welding with a filler rod except the flame is a non consumable tungsten electrode powered by electricity and you dip the aluminum filler rod into your welding pool like with acetylene welding. I had to have a few items TIG welded and they come out very even and clean and on the plus side the heat can be adjusted to weld very thin material, i.e. sheet aluminum. Hope this is of help.
By the way, had the coupe out Christmas day afternoon as the temps soared to 51 degrees. Have accumulated 6,300 miles from registration date of 6/27/2014 until 12/25/2014.

[John Dol]

Thanks Bill, that's probably the way to go.
Glad to see you are enjoying your ride!

John