MIG Welding Aluminum Without a Spool Gun (Video)

[ChuckE2009]

Goodafternoon, everyone!

Hope y'all are having a nice weekend. Heres a recent video of mine... It was highly requested, and although I'd never attempted welding aluminum with anything but a TIG machine or a massive 500 amp push-pull gun, I decided to wing it and hope for the best.

What did I find? Contamination. A LOT of contamination... The wire was clean and the metal was clean, so, best I can figure thats coming from the drive rolls (steel, with grease/crap, and steel on them), and the STEEL liner in the gun.

But aside from that, it worked... great! I had some problems but it was still far more successful than stick welding aluminum, atleast when I tried that a while back. I loosened the tension (greatly) and only had feeding issues when the wire burned back and I pusled the trigger hoping to pop it loose (DONT do that, :blush: ). I also noticed that this wire has a tendancy to burn back when you stop the weld, so I yank the gun back to increase the Contact-Tip-To-Work-Distance, thus preventing the wire from "sticking".

It was fun. And although it should be obvious, I'll say it anyway. This isnt ment to be a how-to. I just wondered how this would work, and went for it. It was really fun :cool2:

Hope you guys like the video!

 

[jwmorris]

I have a Cobra push/pull system along with a spool gun but have also used Teflon liners in normal migs with good results, just cant have a real long lead, 10' is as far as I have used.

 

[mrmikey]

I'm doing a job now using my TA181i, I used a Teflon liner, .045 5356 aluminum wire, .035 "U" groove rolls, it works great.
Look at this post on WW, post #5 where I put a couple of pics http://tinyurl.com/m356xq2 .
Sure beats having to put out $300 for a spool gun and there doesn't seem to be a problem using the last wrap of wire, unlike a spool gun that starts burning back when you're down to the last bit........Mike

 

[yomax4]

Ok vid. 5356 is much easier to push than 4043 but is much less compatible with a lot of the aluminum out there unless you plan to anodise. As posted above, A teflon or nylon liner with U groove drive rolls and a short 10-12' gun, You can weld Aluminum without a spoolgun. The video shows that but I would say use the largest diameter wire your welder can burn for obvious reasons. There are guns out there that are digitally designed with special tips to run Aluminum. They use a coiled steel liner with a teflon interior. Not rocket science if you do it right. I run Pythons and other Push Pull and Spool guns that are fool proof but if you want to save a grand and still do aluminum, Read the above post. High 5 to the 181i with Inductance control...

 

[Arc weld]

Usually with aluminum you run a size bigger contact tip so it won't burn back like in the video. The wire gets hot and because it's aluminum, the heat travels fast and expands the wire causing it to "weld" itself to the contact tip. Another thing I noticed in the video is he's holding the gun funny to try and keep it as straight as possible but there's a pretty sharp bend right before the gun anyway. Feeding wire into the weld puddle 1/2" away puts a little resistance on the wire so it's not the same as feeding the wire straight out the gun.