[TheForge] Stainless steel Welding

[Ries Niemi]

On Friday, September 3, 2004, at 08:59 AM, Blake Williams wrote:

> I have a quick question on this stainless steel topic.  Recently at 
> work I
> had the engineering department basically call me stupid when I asked 
> them to
> weld something that was stainless steel.  I took a year of welding in 
> High
> School and if I remember correctly it can be done.  You mentioned that 
> you
> TIG weld parts together...  I never got to work with TIG, only MIG...  
> How
> does a person weld stainless steel?  Does it require a special welder 
> or
> just a special filler rod?
>
> Blake
>
>

There are a couple hundred recipes for stainless steel, so no one size 
fits all. But most common alloys of stainless are 300 series, and it 
welds just fine, Mig, Tig, or stick.
Tig is the cleanest and best looking, but you can mig or stick weld it 
too. We like tig welding cause its quiet, no sparks, no smoke, no slag 
to chip, no dingleberries, and if you are good, the welds look so good 
you dont even have to grind em.
In fact, you can braze it just fine as well, so you could even use a 
gas torch. I Tig braze stainless from time to time with a silicon 
bronze filler rod, especially when I want to attach stainless to a 
dissimilar metal- stainless to bronze, say.

You need to get a filler rod that is compatible with your stainless 
alloy- and the more fussy the application, the closer you want to be. 
For ornamental iron stuff like I do, its no big deal. I use whatever 
the welding store sells me. If I was building the space shuttle, I 
would be a little more discerning.
Sounds like your engineering dept. is either just trying to get rid of 
you, or else they only know what they do every day.
Cause welding stainless is easy.

ries