[NCARC] Mig welder

[James Cizek]

Hi Kerry,

  You cannot MIG weld Aluminum.  Well, not very successfully anyway.  To
weld aluminum you need a TIG welder.  Completely different process, and
more importantly, a different gas mixture.   TIG welding uses a Tungsten
electrode and is done with electrode negative.  It uses Argon gas (or
helium for certain applications)   In TIG, you form a welding "puddle" with
the high current electrode and push the puddle along, touching a filler rod
to the puddle as you need material added.

I will tell you this.  1) Harbor freight doesn't sell ANY welder that is
capable of aluminum welding.  They even say right in their descriptions.
 and 2) If they did, you probably wouldn't want it.  I have several harbor
freight welders, and I have several higher end ones.  You can get away with
cheap Chinese welders with stick welding, and even MIG welding (especially
if you use flux core) but to weld aluminum successfully, you REALLY need a
capable machine that is square wave, inverter type, and capable of shifting
the pulse shape and frequency.  I've been playing this game (trying to find
a cheap way to weld aluminum) for years and after much research and trial
and error, have come to the conclusion that you just can't skimp here and
expect it to work.

That said, there ARE still some reasonable Chinese TIG (aluminum capable)
welders out there that are MUCH cheaper than the the "good" ones.  Take a
look at brands like Lotos (I have a Lotos that I am pretty happy with),
Eastwood, Richmond, Simadre, and Everlast.   They are all "cheap" aluminum
welders (Chinese origin).   Assuming you don't need to weld anything too
thick (limit of 1/4" maybe??) you can get away with a 200 amp (ish)
machine.  Probably expect to pay$400 ~$1000 for a machine like this, with
the lower end having very few features and being really only good for new,
clean, metal with proper joints, and the upper end having features that
will help you successfully weld out of position, dirty, rough or large
gaps.

Sorry it's probably not the answer you want to hear, but hopefully this
helps you research more into what you want.

Happy to try and answer any other questions about it if you have them. I am
NOT an expert on this in any way, but have had a lot of failures in my
learning along the way :)

GL.
73   James  KI0KN

On Wed, May 27, 2015 at 2:50 PM, Kerry Miller <n0wiq at comcast.net> wrote:

> Hi Group,
>
> I am in need of some council, I want to go to "HARBOR FREIGHT" and buy
> welder and supplies to use in the construction of an antenna out of
> aluminum and weld some of the pieces together.
>
> --
> Kerry N0WIQ
> My web site URL is:
> http://mywebpages.comcast.net/n0wiq
>
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