WHICH IS HARDER?? Stainless VS Aluminum Tig Welding 🔥
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- Опубликовано: 18 авг 2021
- I get asked the question alllll the time, "When tig welding, which is harder? Stainless or Aluminum?" So today, we are going to put them head to head for a FUN episode where I weigh the things I like about each one, and the things that drive me insane about them as well. This was a fun one for me to make, as I had a blast coming up with ways to make up my mind about which one took the cake.
Comment below, I want to know what you think of this one as well. Which one can get you on a bad day???
💎💎💎Take a FREE online Tig class on my website HERE👉 www.pacificarctigwelding.com/
Check out the episode I mentioned about how to deal with your stainless welds turning GRAY • Why are my tig welds G...
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Thanks so much for watching!
💎💎💎Take a FREE online Tig class on my website HERE👉 www.pacificarctigwelding.com/
Check out the vid I mention HERE🔥 ruclips.net/video/LXP3uWHWGOM/видео.html
excellent! congrats on the added muscle!
Have you ever welded 9 chrome its another animal as well I weld stainless carbon and crome regularly and dabble with aluminum and aluminum is different than any I mentioned before I use lift start tig because its easier to weld I position and I control my heat with travel speed can't do that with aluminum gotta have that pedal or trigger switch
I fixed a lawnmower and gave it to my friend he's doing some gardening jobs I'm happy
Dusty, your opinion is the most important thing on this channel.!!!
I have only ever done aluminum tig, then went to mig steel. I was told by many people that mig steel is easier. But sometimes I mess up wire speed and voltage. I found aluminum tig to be much easier and people look at me like I'm a fool.
I had the theory of teaching a brand new welder aluminum tig first.
Even argued with a welding instructor about it.
If you do alumatig first, you don't develop the habits and expectations of steel. And yes, learning stainless from that experience might be even tougher. Jack if all or master if one?
Mig is easiest than Tig. And aluminum and magnesium are very hard to Tig weld. The hardest welding process
I believe the hardest part learning to weld was setting the machine up & everyone is different. the tradies teaching me settings weren't for me I liked to move a bit quicker so finding the settings that work for you is a big one
WWWHhhhaaaatttttt
I tig aluminum never done anything else tho mig welded steel like 4 times
Thanks for another awesome video, but the way I found out that if my aluminum is getting to hot when welding is by the width of my puddle, when I first started which wasn’t that long ago I would start off with a certain amperage and I would keep my foot steady at that amperage but quickly noticed that by the time I got to the end “ if I made it” my puddle would start to get wider and eventually burn through, after watching a couple of videos and asking some other welders what I was doing wrong, they help me figure out that I had to ease up on the pedal as the material got hotter, that bit of info has helped me and hopefully it can help some other newbie like myself, thanks again for sharing your welding knowledge with us it has definitely help me out tremendously - Juan/Los Angeles, CA
Awesome! That’s a keen observation, great you’ve figured it out! Thanks for watching the vid:) Fill and Chill 🤙
Stainless came second nature to me. Extremely easy!
Aluminum was a whole different animal. Much more of a struggle for me than stainless
Another worthy catergory would be warping. I weld almost entirely stainless so I'm used to it but when I switch to mild steel or ali I'm always amazed at how little it warps. Great vid as always brother.Keep em coming.
Ooooooh good one. Yes that’s a big one for sure. Thanks for the suggestion and for watching!:)
I constantly switch what I’m working on, not by choice lol, in the morning I may be doing aluminum tig, then mild steel stick, then stainless tig and then some brass tig or stainless mig, but man I can’t get a feel for how much it’s gonna pull with stainless mig for some reason
So I’m an aluminum welder and the main thing ID say for heat and overall knowing if your doing good is knowing how to read the puddle since there are no colors reading the puddle is your best bet
Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and say stainless is waaaaay harder. So much that I don't know how this is even a question, haha. But I will still watch and learn.
I don’t find either one to be hard per say, but I do think aluminum is slightly more involved from cleaning to heat control.
Absolutely. Small details with each:)
You are a gifted tig welder.
I started with gas torches, then TIg aluminum,stainless, lastly titanium. Tig was always easy ,after I mastered the oxyacetylene torches.
So what I learned today is to NOT take coffee breaks !! Great video !
A tig welder is one of the best tools I have ever invested in. Great equipment with a great range of adjustments for precise control.
I started with mild steel then tried aluminum that everyone said was hard....no problems. Stainless on the other hand. Warps easily, should not be overheated or it could loose it's stainless properties and then we have the sugaring and back purging. As a hobbyist it the metal I struggle with the most.
Absolutely my friend. Headaches for days sometimes 🤦🏻♂️😂🙏
I weld 304L stainless for food processing equipment pretty much daily and use Kemppi equipment. I love it now, but at the start it was rough. Settings, travel speed, gas flow, back purge and working super clean all played a role in getting results I was happy with. There's no aluminum welding going on in the shop, so I can't speak to that.
Awesome! Good to hear you’re shredding on it now💪💪
This guy's giving off serious boarder vibes. he either surfs, skates or snow boards. I would bet my TIG welder on it
Found the channel around March, I've been non stop learning from you Dusty.. I'm a bee keeper from new Brunswick, I'm building aluminum pallets for our bee hives! Thanks so much for the content man!
Great job dusty thanx for the great info
I would say stainless considering how much it tends to warp the thinner you go.
Thanks Dusty,I did an intermediate tig course at tafe (only with mild steel) no tig welding since.
I worked as a mig welder for 2 years, before doing a course intermediate & advanced mig, again only mild steel.
I passed with flying colours, I always finished first being a process welder.
An instructor got upset with me, he stress tested both our welds his broke mine didn't.
I was a process welder making brackets & guides for garage doors, mild steel, I ended up being their fastest welder.
There was a fitter & turner there, he would always bring welding jobs to me tacked to complete, he didn't trust anyone else. 3 other welders got sacked, 6 months later I quit as I copped their workloads, then I got injured & quit.
Awesome content, great energy!
Damn we are on the island too... trying to learn tig welding! Great Video!
Stainless had always been harder for me..by far until its all I welded and you start to understand how it works...however you've helped me a ton brother👊🏼
Great video Dusty.
I'm learning with my everlast 210 ext! Thanks for the post
Yessssss! Badass machine! Let me know how it goes!
Dusty again great job and well explained I my self love working with aluminum and most of my welds are blended in and brushed so the electronics don't have to be removed on exposed helms on boats from Skiffs to 100 ÷ Yachts and anything in between.
Like I said before wish you were around when I started. But never to old to learn.
great video!
And yet another good video.
heres my opinion in the topic.
4 years of experience
Learning path:
Stainless -> Mild steel -> Aluminum.
from my experience:
Stainless steel easiest to get good results consistently, the oxidation and heat input is easy if you know the fundamentals. what I like the most is that I can see clearly what's going on with te puddle. Basically what's there will be there no questions asked. the puddle can be wonky at times. but that's visually seen while laying down the bead, so you can compromise for it.
Mild steel is somewhat brazing for me. you can never expect that all of the sudden it will spark or bubble on you. hot rolled material is hard to clean off the mill scale, and whenever i'm using cold rolled plates no matter what cleaning or prep I put into it, it will always have arc"reflection" stuff, basically not clean at all. Butt joints lay wire only, otherwise major root suckback (and once again stainless, once you put that filler in, you have ensured reinforcement.)
Aluminium is the hardest to get down on. since the heat greatly varies the result from the start to finish. There are major aspects that you have to consider on the go. While any other material you seek for comfortable speed and then fly away. hands down the most confusing joint is the inside corner. it is the hardest since you see that the leading edge isnt wedding in to the joint. Once it does that it's done for. instantly undercut from the back side or in the root. So aluminium is the biggest guessing game of them all.
Now I have only so few years of welding, that i'm still figuring things out, but from the most basic logical point of view I think that's the order things should be.
From predictable to unpredictable.
I picked up the ck mt200 on a whim the other month because I havent touched a tig machine since high school and I like how the weld process performs. Im gonna say that aluminum and ss are equally as hard to pick up with the difficulty leaning towards aluminum, solely for the fact that it will drop out from under you without warning. Im waiting for my furick kit to show so I dial in the ss settings but with the pink cups and mild filler its actuaslly turning out pretty good.
Im also a certified structural weldor and the thinest stuff I touch at work is 1/4" and the thickest is 2" ar500, so messing around with this thin stuff on tig is a nice break from the normal routine at work.
Hey dusty I have a question. If you make a mistake on an art piece how do you go about rectifying it. Do you have to grind and re polish / brush the sheet? Do you use artistic licence and weld over it? Just curious to learn ways of repairing poor welds without starting over or leaving big ugly areas where Iv obviously ground something out. Cheers dude. Appreciate you sharing your skills with us massively!
Great video Dusty!
Thanks dude!
un crack para pasar la cuarentena y cosas para inventar con los materiales que tenemos en casa...
desde Argentina
This video made me laugh......at myself! The first home tig projected I ever attempted was 1/4" aluminum flat bar corner joints to make a battery frame. I started making aluminum swiss cheese, but soon got it under control. Ugly ugly welds, but I'm still riding that e-bike! Thanks for the vid Dusty!!
Nice one mate
I'm still pretty new to Tig welding but I must say stainless is much harder for me personally. Or maybe I just need to practice it more. Thanks for the great video Dusty. You the man.
Awesome! I appreciate you watching! Keep buzzing away and let me know how it goes!🍺🍺
Ali gave me all kinds of problems to start with. But I've managed to refine my prep and now I really enjoy it. The puddle and material flows really nicely. I also had problems with stainless to start with, turned out to be gas coverage. Now that is fixed I've made good progress with it but still find the puddle doesn't quite wet and flow like ali does. Thanks for all the tips Dusty you've helped my welding no end.
I need one of those Argon vacuum chambers you were mentioning. 😂
I learned on stainless but I had no choice haha.
Not even a question aluminum all the way shits a whole headache n picky don’t let you get away with no mistakes unlike like stainless steel
Great video! I’m a hands-on PM of Installations turned welder due to COVID-19. Most of my experience is from working mild steel in the off-road industry.
Now, at the the shop we use nothing but stainless. Most of our material is 304L with the occasional 316L. We use everything from sheet, flat, angle, channel, pipe, tube (round and square) and strut in various thicknesses from 14 gauge to 1/2 and sch10-sch80
I must say stainless is one beast of a material. When I started out with stainless, I grabbed various forms and sizes of everything from our 55gal recycle drums and went at it. At the end of every practice piece I would purposely destroy the weld in every way you could imagine. This is how I found the limitations of various material well as my personal limitations.
I couldn’t believe how sensitive stainless could be. There is so much more to stainless then simply laying down a nice bead or weave. Assuming basic welding skills are up to par. Learning the traits of various forms and thickness of stainless steel and how it’s reacts to the work is a whole challenge on its own.
One day I hope to take on some aluminum.
we have one weld at my shop thats like a 20g dome fused to a 14g sheet. hands down the most difficult weld we do. that fucking dome will blow through if you even look at it funny lol
Hey buddy made a video on how to perfectly weld thin stainless 1mm or less without purging. Just with the torch or less than number 10 cup. Looking forward for that.
do you have recommendations for the good book of tig welding,. i like your video on you tube
I weld 304 process piping along with larger fabrication jobs all of which in stainless. Got a new Miller 220ac and find the aluminum much more difficult. It’s a whole different beast that I will conquer soon, spooling is cool but not as aesthetically pleasing as tig can be. Anyways keep up the good work brother 💪🏼👨🏽🏭
Awesome! Always keep learning, makes welding fun! Cheers and thanks for watching!
Nice!!!!
I'm not a professional welder, but I do a lot of repair welding on many different metals on punches, dies and assemblies. I don't know how much anyone actually studies materials on a chemical or physical scale, but learning those aspects can help. (From my experience) the biggest difference between aluminum and most grades of stainless are the heat dispersion. Aluminum transmits heat very fast, that's why you generally have to crank up the amps, where stainless transmits the heat much more slowly. The heat "piles up" as you go, that's why the beginning may look good but then it grays out as you are boiling off part of the alloy making it brittle. What also can create trouble is that any given alloy can have a wide range of allowable mix, so even if both parts are say, 304ss, if they're from 2 different batches, one can be markedly different from the other because of the alloys' tolerance. Another thing I find is that we often forget is that some materials are more magnetic than others, which is part of what makes the puddle "crawl". Thanks for your videos!
I've been welding stainless steel for a long time and ur definitely right about it being wild out of the gate once in a while lol
I've been doing it for a couple years (not full time) and can confidently stick something together decently. Still, every pass turns out different and some days all I do is overheat and warp things :/. I take pictures of the perfect stuff to remind myself it is actually possible
I find it funny half of the comments say SS and half say aluminum is harder. I think SS has warping more than aluminum. That said, I think the 50/50 response is due to how often each person actually spends with each material. If aluminum is hard, you need to do more of it, and visa versa. The only way to get better is to actually do it. I'm not a great welder but I used to braze a ton of copper and was very good at it. I'm just getting into welding
Since you mentioned coffee breaks, both coffee and tea cause muscle tremor, which may be microscopic but it amplifies as you focus on keeping your hands or feet steady. The more you struggle to suppress the tremor, the more intense it gets. A rule I learned from zoologists who do incredible things like attaching mechanical sensors to the feet of jumping spiders: no tea or coffee for at least 4 hours before any operation that requires a steady hand.
oof that sounds rough, I'd probably quit the caffiene while im welding in that case but I think not being asleep outweighs that where I work :P
I find about three fingers of JD smooths out a weld real nice
personally, aluminum for me was easier than any other metal. it was easier for me to get to making good looking welds than mild or SS. after a year of teaching myself (haven't welded in years now), i was still burning the hell out of mild and SS. Also i hated the way it felt trying to push filler into mild steel or SS. I love the way filler just sinks and fills out perfectly on aluminum. Not saying i was doing instagram style welds out the gate on aluminum but i started making prettier welds on aluminum about a month into it and mild or SS i couldn't get it right or looking any better after a year of 4 hours a day of practicing.
"Stick with me..." I thought we were TIG welding here... ;)
I work at an R&D and we started needed some welding done. I bought a Dynasty tig and learned how to weld on 1/8 stainless. All the things you were talking about make sense. What's interesting is that I was practicing on scrap iron and moving straight to the job. I get great penetration( sometimes too good lol) and my boxes are doing what they are designed to do. I do have a question: Is keeping the torch straight and dipping the rod the only method for using the torch? I have noticed that i am using a side to side motion with my torch and walking it that way. My torch cup does not touch the surface as I hold it more at a 90. I have not noticed anyone else doing this. SUPER glad that I found your channel. I'm going to learn so much. Have a wonderful day people. Make good choices.
Damn it man. Damn bro. Mean while I had to finance a pro tig from harbor freight to get into tig welding.
The biggest one with stainless for me is warping. I work in a food factory and 99% of what I do is stainless and only a quarter of that is using new metal. All the mounting frames are stainless and when you are trying to weld tubing and keep it square so gear box motor and pump will line up without vibration. That's a challenge! Worse to repair when you are trying to re repair something that someone laid poo poo down on. Try lighting up on sugar...it don't work. Plus all the contamination on the part. I will say that aluminum is a welcome gear change out there. Im always excited to get it. For me welding stainless "properly" made me a better welder across the board. It makes you walk a tighter line and pay attention to more things.
I'm not a pro welder but I go tig welding quite often and steel or stainless makes me happy, and aluminium sad. I can't manage it, despite of many trainings, settings, gear. It's always a mess !
100% whit you brother 💪👊🤘
Where do you get your back cap's ?
Hi dusty, what's the respirator you use?
Stainless easer all day .. started on stainless hate aluminium
is that a newer Everlast?
which model did you move to? just got the powertig 210ext. so far very impressed. I'll water cool this machine and if I get up against the power barrier I'll stack a 325ext or a 350ext. but then i think i bump up against my electrical capacity. wondering if you found yourself power bound with your 210ext?
as always. thank you for continuing to share with all of us out here. it really does help a lot.
Yeah! It’s the 255- review incoming!💪💪
With aluminum aside from getting a water-cooled torch it’s tough to hide. With stainless you can add fancy cups, chill bars, purging etc. It’s also easier to get started with stainless with a scratch or touch start rig. But what do I know, I still struggle with carbon steel, so they’re both really hard.
Carbon is one I struggled with more than stainless as well. Never welded aluminum but I also work in a fabrication shop where cup walking is preferred. Stainless is my baby as it’s what I’ve had the most practice with.
Thanks Dusty LARRYMOORE
Good video. Unrelated question...I notice all of your paint cans do not have the nozzles on them, and are stored laying down. Do you use a special air brush attachment? (I recall in some of your videos you were airbrushing some of your art.) I always have trouble with the nozzle plugging...even after turning the can upside/spraying to clear it. Replacing the nozzle from a used can usually works for that. However, an even bigger problem is the can plugging internally and not being able to use all the paint. Would like to get your thoughts? Thanks
Yeah! I have special nozzles for them, they’re usually one session use only. They clog (especially the fine spray tips) and are notoriously hard to clean.) I’ll keep some for rough use or for my kids to use when we spray paint, but I just buy bags of them and use new ones each time:)
Wow, interesting viewpoints. I personally find welding SS easy as can be and aluminum a PITA.
i weld stainless all day every day at work. did about a month of aluminum tig at my community college but ended up getting a job doing stainless. we had a super small aluminum job come through a couple weeks ago (just a couple outside corner welds) and i could tell if i spent a solid 3 months doing aluminum i could probably do a better job welding it than my year and a half experience on stainless lol. considering switching and trying to find a job welding aluminum now just to see lol
if i weld a aluminium pipe, shloud i Purge the internals? Or not ?
Струбцины называются ваймы. Логичнее профиль располагать на ребро, чтобы меньше прогиб был.Фиксацию ответной каретки проще делать без резьбы, поднял-опустил, можно с пружинкой или просто с фиксацией штыря, в крайнем верхнем положении, чтобы не терялся. Когда сохнет клей времени крутить винты нет.
I’m new to welding and my new job use ss 90%
I'll also have to check out the graying video, but as far as graying with stainless, it has to do with the quality of the stainless more than anything. I've welded stainless stuff and wondered what the big deal was, and enjoyed it, and the stainless wasn't clean and the rod was not correct. When I bought some cheap stainless off of Amazon to weld up an exhaust system, it welded poorly and all of the welds were grayed. I though I was loosing my mind until I welded a high quality stainless clamp on a high quality stainless muffler that turned out perfectly.
The crowd cheering noise gets me when the points go on the board
I started with aluminium and can do it well. Stainless steel is harder for me because I don't have a stable hand all of the time.
what I leraned from this video is that don't take coffee breaks
Aluminum doesn't glow red just because its melting temperature is just about 660 C. So if you heat it to 1000-1200 C where glowing are really visible, aluminum just evaporates. You can heat discrete drops of aluminum to glowing temp. if they inside a thick oxide bubble. Actually on 660 deg. C metalls glowing slightly with dark red color but when surface is mirror-smooth and shiny you just can't see that glowing.
i find stainless hardest to do, simply because of the fine control required. everything is smaller and requires speed and precision.
aluminum is almost the opposite, everything is bigger. i find it a lot easier. the thing that i see tripping up people is the amount of amps required. doesn't help that some online calcs are way off (eg miller).
thick aluminum, high amps, high heat, slow to heat up, tungsten melts, more dials or lack there of
IMO stainless is harder. A certain amount of skill and hand coordination is required to move fast enough. If you don't have this and move too slowly then the piece will overheat and you'll get grey welds, regardless of how good your gas coverage is. This is made even more difficult due to the fact that stainless material tends to be thinner than aluminum and that welds in stainless are so much narrower. Additionally, stainless can warp like crazy and a fair bit of experience is needed to mitigate this (good fit-up, lots of tacking, anticipation of which way a weld will pull, etc.). The big, chunky welds of aluminum, thicker material, lack of distortion and cleaning action of AC make creating a decent bead on aluminium easier in comparison. One thing that is harder about aluminum though is all the settings. Welding in AC means you have AC frequency, AC balance and possibly pulse duration, peak amps, base amps, etc. to understand and worry about. DC TIG is quite a bit simpler in this way. Having said this, I started with stainless before moving on to aluminum, so maybe I'm just remembering all the struggles I had starting out on TIG and blaming them on the material!
Stainless is a whole new animal to weld. Aluminum has its challenges. But stainless has a fine line between a good weld and ruining. Titanium is actually easier to weld
I looooooovvve titanium….! Maybe a episode on that soon….!🤔
@@PacificArcTigWelding titanium is fun. In some ways I think it’s more forgiving. Stainless (if it’s not artwork and you aren’t after the colors) there is a narrow window. Awesome videos and love your artwork.
-Which is harder?
-Yes.
On a serious note now, as a beginner, I'd say stainless personally. I have the hardest time to generate non oxidized welds.
I've been training on my spare time at work every time I can on AL and I'm starting to get a good feeling for it now. But stainless (304L) ? is a bitch. 9 weld out of ten ends out dark grey.. I've tried fiddling with gas, amps, tried to go faster but then the stacks look fugly (kind of spade shaped) , I even purchased a giant cup with gas lens ..... and it's barely better. It may have to do with the fact that my work place doesn't use much stainless at all and so the leftovers I can play with are small , not ideally shaped and few.. but still.
Stainless is frustration.
Once u learn how to weld each neither is more difficult they are just different. Different doesn't mean it is harder most of the problem's he is talking about are things u learn how to master. It takes about 2 years of consistent welding aluminum to get where u can handle what ever is put in front of you and many more after that to master all the challenges that u run into. Anybody can do a nice job sitting at a table with a new welding machine on new material when u can do the same nice job on a old outboard motor casting or in the engine room of a boat in a very difficult position then u are getting some ware. To much focus is put on laying down a pretty bead if there is not adequate penetration and that pretty bead wont hold. Welding is a challenging trade, if things aren't working out it just means u still have more to learn.
Amen
Please do some training dvd's !!!!
This vid makes me feel way fuckin better haha!
Man I feel like I picked up aluminum pretty easy, but my stainless looks like dogsh!t lol , my haz with stainless is super inconsistent, the starts of my weld is shiny for 2 dabs, then my haz flairs out and for about a half inch it’s oxidized and then the last 3-4 dabs are blue or gold, filler no filler, it don’t matter, I always usually get the same result….. what am I doing wrong?
Sounds like coffee is the problem ;) j/k
You say it’s easier to start a puddle on aluminum… but did you have to use AC to do it and adjust that?
Aluminum.
not containing iron and not glowing are two very different and unrelated things. tungsten and copper being prime examples, not sure if thats what you meant but i figure ill leave this comment in case someone is mislead.
I came looking for a comment like this - aluminium glows red just like brass, copper, iron, etc., even mercury, and at the same temperature as well. The problem with ali is the glowing temp is right at the molten temp and compounded by the "shininess" of the molten puddle. It has nothing to d with it being a non-ferrous metal at all.
Aluminum puddle will start getting runny. You then have a decision to make quick before holt molten metal drops on your feet.
2 hours of post flow AHHHAHAH 🤣
Bro You should realy get an airstream welding helmet
I find stainless harder
It’s soooooooooo pesky sometimes… 😂🤦🏻♂️
@@PacificArcTigWelding I picked up TIG aluminium within a few hours behind the helmet (and a few good videos from yourself and other youtubers).
Stainless on the other hand, it always seems too cold or too hot for me! More so too cold, and then it looks like crap.
Yeah, aluminum is way soft.
I personally feel that stainless steel it difficult but aluminum is abit more of a hassle to weld and there's alot more settings you have to work with when it comes to aluminum.. cast aluminum is a b#&ch to weld
I have more then once had bad bottles of argon. the puddle is like gooie wont flow right...stop change bottle purge line welds good again..tiged for over 30 years..aluminum is easer then Stainless
i weld stainless tube and aluminum tube daily... stainless is a 5 times easier to weld well...
Stainless is easy. It flows like water. Aluminium is much harder.
challenge yourself... do a fillet weld on a razor blade.... not a box cutting blade , but a straight edge razor,
What about aluminium? :)
Welder here, I say aluminum
can you walk rhe cup?
Thats the if you can roller skate you can ice skate,
👍😎👍
Sounds like stainless steel is allergic to coffee ?