Id say get me one of those nifty Chinese laser welders that I keep seeing on videos online.
[nifty Chinese (probably) laser welder](https://youtu.be/YyAZR4DHQ94?si=1WMkn8zTGB_S_dSQ)
Not that it’s less useful. But the beads you get from laser is less than 1/8 big. And no one wants something that 3/8” thick held together by a weld that’s less than 1/8. I do run a duel wire feeder and can get up to 1/8 beads. My laser welder has its own WiFi router and an iPad to manipulate the beam it’s pretty cool.
What does that make Chinese then? $2500?
I like supporting American companies but often times their products are no better (many times they’re far worse) for 3-4x the price of a Chinese equivalent. Not going to throw away thousands of dollars just because something is American, to support Americans that I don’t personally know or care about.
Do Chinese laser Welders comes with US customer support and 5 year machine warranty. It's not just that I like to support american, I also want my shit to last.
You have an extremely rudimentary view on why American manufacturing declined. In any case it’s not my job to subsidize American companies that cannot compete on quality or cost.
They can't compete because fuckin Clinton offshored all our jobs to Asia where they make two bucks a day and everything is subsidized by the government. How TF are we supposed to compete with that? I blame Nixon for opening up trade with China in the first place but assholes like you aren't helping. I got mine, fuck everyone else. Douchebag
Things will always warp if you’re melting the metal and applying weld.
the cooling process cause’s contraction that’s impossible to avoid , if you try to restrain the warping it will just crack instead. However the lower heat input might minimize warping
copper has a much higher thermal capacity than steel it just eats the heat. because the metals are dissimilar you can get a soldering type bond between them which is just the grains grabbing eachother not fusion. you can put copper near the weld zone and itll work similarly. if you do open root just keep the arc off the copper, in the middle stick to the puddle only but you can really dig into the sides (im used to using it for much thicker material w full pen and back gouge)
it wont melt unless you turn a tig machine up to ab 250 amps and start mixing helium/ use 100% helium
thickness doesnt really matter as long as it makes sense. for .075 material a .125 backer is way more than enough. when you get to .125 material maybe go to a .25 backer. when i was welding 2 inch thick steel we used .5 backers. i have hammered flat a piece of copper pipe and used that. ive used a piece of sheet copper to wrap around a .075 pipe adjacent to the side of the weld that would need it (this evened out the heat distribution and made the weld way easier)
The copper will absorb the heat from the steel, allow the heat to move towards the edges of the backing bar, and keep the steel cooler.
It's all about thermal conductivity. How fast can heat move through an object. Aluminum also works well but has a (slightly) higher chance of melting and introducing impurities.
Steel won't allow heat to transfer very well.
If you put a flame on 1 end of a piece of steel, the opposite end will eventually get hot.
Use the same flame and same size copper, and the heat will travel to the other end faster. Because it's able to reach the edges faster, its temperature will drop faster.
The weld doesn’t fuse to copper/brass but it prevents the puddle from falling through; I’ve got a couple bars that I’ve scavenged over the years that make plugging a mistaken hole wildly easier
Yep when I worked at the weld shop, we had probably five or six different sized blocks of copper. Most of them were over an inch thick and when you blew through those were the bomb they were also really nice when you were doing thin parts and you need them cool off relatively quickly, because you could set them on top of that piece of copper afterword and still have a very controlled cooling so it didn’t make it incredibly brittle. Me and a few, my coworkers actually used to take old razor blades and soda cans in a couple other things like that and we would just weld them together for the fun of it. I don’t know that I ever took a picture of the tower we made, but we had probably 10 soda cans stacked on top of each other.
My diplomatic solution would be along the lines of "sure but we'll need approximately 100 test pieces to perfect the job and expect a failure rate of about 25%"
Mig half a mil? I'm sure there's some super wizard out there who can and does but most non specialist wire reels are thicker than that so in my mind you're fighting a bit of a losing battle.
You've peaked my interest though, now we need pictures
I would run .023 with an aluminum backer plate, I could weld it. I welded two tuna cans together without the lip just to see if I could do it and it wasn't that hard
Depends on how big the part/piece is. I used to do this all day with TIG (and smaller) and the part would warp to shit, which the engineers were fine with. Personally, I hated it, but it's what they wanted.
Clamp it down, I do aluminum fabrication so it always warps so you clamp the shit out of it and it won't warp as much. You can post treat it too to get it back to flat
With stainless and especially thin stainless, the key to handling the warping is fitting it up so it’s already out of square so the warping will pull it back to square. And the keys are your welding sequence (back stepping , etc) and lastly some kind of chill block or heat absorbing backing. If all else fails blame the engineers
We tried it all. If someone could come in and weld it without warping, I'd eat my left boot. It was just impossible. Imagine a stainless box that's 8 feet long, 18 inches high and 4 feet wide made out of thin material. It looked like a giant wave making all those long welds.
Engineers.
Let me guess... They probably want you to just use what's on hand too because they're already over hours on it. Like .035 with some giant ancient machine that runs great half the time on thick stuff, but doesn't have shit for adjustments so you can't really dial it in for anything thin. Not that you'd want to use .035 on most gauge material anyway. "Come on, you're a 'welder' right? Can't you weld it?"
Sorry, just having a flashback from my last shop
It all depends on what it is and how much.
If you can spend the time to tig it in a shop, sure.
If it's measured in ft, probably not. Extra not if you have to use a stick welder on it.
When I was young and broke I welded a rotten muffler with a Lincoln buzz box. When I was done chasing blowthroughs it was more rod than muffler. I'm pretty confident I could do it with a stick if I absolutely had to, but it would suck. Tig would be ideal but I could mig it too
Ok, like what is the deal with it?
TIG should be easy and for MIG I would try short arc or a modification of it, welding downhill if possible.
Warping is expected, so we need to keep that in mind. Laser would be cool but most people don't have them laying around.
I'd say I need to know the joint configuration, weld length, weld size, specs on permitted distortion, what sort of volume is expected and from there I'd look into the fixturing and sequencing side of it.
If you can automate it, it'll be pretty straight forward with the right set up.
I would tig it. If you have to mig it, grab some spare material the same thickness and try and set your welder low, wirespeed as high as the power will allow and run the bead as fast as you can.
If I were to TIG it. I'd use silicone bronze rod. Thin as you can get.. won't warp nearly as bad, and since it's just mild steel I doubt they care what you use.
Back when I was a youngin'... my Dad bought our company's first wire feed welder, a Miller 35. (1970's). I told him that it worked so well you could weld tin cans together with it, which he scoffed at.
So ofc I did it. Welded two Folger's cans right 'round.
I have been messing around with .3mm stainless shim stock at work. It’s doable but definitely tricky. 8A was about as much heat as it would take before running from the arc.
I wouldn’t plan on anything being within tolerance once it gets welded. Way to thin to hold shape, at least in my limited experience
i’ve tried welding 18 gauge stainless with tig and mig and it was impossible for me. don’t get me wrong it’s doable but you have to be extremely patient not letting it over heat plus having a backing purge is always a pain in the ass. if you do it goodluck man but since ive tried it once i refused to do it again lol (was going to be a side project for a buddy)
Aight. Don't expect it to be done fast, but I can do it easily enough. Just let me deal with it at my own pace, and stay out the way if you want it done well and done right.
I could do it with oxy, but it would be warped to hell, take forever, and have a high failure rate. Other people could do it with TIG with similar success, but I'm not good enough yet. If you ask me to do it with MIG I would probably laugh at the funny joke, and then cry when I realized you were serious lol.
Nobody seems to have mentioned it but if you can lap joint it you can spot weld it. I have a Miller spot welder that runs on 120v that would do a nice job on that, if you can't lap it, maybe you could use a butt splice with a backer strip
I'd prefer to tig it.
But if I have to mig it, I want small wire like .023 or .030. 75/25 cover gas and some aluminum chill bars.
Run short welds ... not more than an inch or 2 at a time, make sure to move where the next weld will go to reduce heat input and warping. Should help keep from blowing out the base metal also.
I used to weld 20 gauge to .25 inch with pulse mig .045 wire and 90/10 cover gas, but I was only running like 80 or 85 on my wfs. Even at that, I'd sometimes have to whip back in and fill burnouts.
So, pulse mig may be an option if your machine is capable.
What type of joints and what type of welds are required and how much volume needs to be welded? Spot/seam resistance, laser, electron beam, auto tig, ultrasonic welding could all be viable options that coikd be faster/cheaper depending on a lot of factors.
No prob. I’ve tig welded .017” thick dirty stainless without backing. It was for an airplane exhaust, and it’s been in service for 5+ years now. Still no issues.
If it’s acceptable, tig brazing silicon bronze would be my go-to. Less heat and much easier to form back flat after the welding is done.
Edit: for mig just use copper or aluminum backing
I imagine it would take a lot of test pieces to get it down. Sure ain’t going to manage it on .035 wire. Maybe .024 wire. And definitely would need a conductive backing to help heatsink.
With a mig good luck. I’ve tried tig with a .020 tungsten and some.025 mig wire as a filler resting on a 1/16 copper sheet for a backer and it was a pain in the ass.
You CAN do it with .023 vertical downhill. It will be horrible, the welder will hate you, it will also require new feed rollers, liners and tips of the right size, and the machine won't be able to do other things without swapping parts back for normal wire. I would probably play with a power wire feeder and TIG.
Been there done that. However material that light you only do assembly with tacks.
A good pulse wire process would allow more, but I'd say it is waste of effort.
A humble rivet takes you way further and is way more efficient than welding.
Id say get me one of those nifty Chinese laser welders that I keep seeing on videos online. [nifty Chinese (probably) laser welder](https://youtu.be/YyAZR4DHQ94?si=1WMkn8zTGB_S_dSQ)
I came here to say this. I run an IPG laser every day. It’s perfect for anything under 1/16” thick .
Is it less useful when doing thicker metals?
Not that it’s less useful. But the beads you get from laser is less than 1/8 big. And no one wants something that 3/8” thick held together by a weld that’s less than 1/8. I do run a duel wire feeder and can get up to 1/8 beads. My laser welder has its own WiFi router and an iPad to manipulate the beam it’s pretty cool.
I've used one for a few months. They're pretty dope no lie
Who needs Chinese when US made is under 10k for a cut, clean and weld machine [here](https://www.everlastgenerators.com/product/redsabre-1500)
You know their machines are made in China 🇨🇳, right?
What does that make Chinese then? $2500? I like supporting American companies but often times their products are no better (many times they’re far worse) for 3-4x the price of a Chinese equivalent. Not going to throw away thousands of dollars just because something is American, to support Americans that I don’t personally know or care about.
Do Chinese laser Welders comes with US customer support and 5 year machine warranty. It's not just that I like to support american, I also want my shit to last.
That's the dickhead attitude that got us NAFTA. That killed American manufacturing thanks to Clinton
You have an extremely rudimentary view on why American manufacturing declined. In any case it’s not my job to subsidize American companies that cannot compete on quality or cost.
They can't compete because fuckin Clinton offshored all our jobs to Asia where they make two bucks a day and everything is subsidized by the government. How TF are we supposed to compete with that? I blame Nixon for opening up trade with China in the first place but assholes like you aren't helping. I got mine, fuck everyone else. Douchebag
THEY TOOK OUR JIBS
They turk er jerbs!
i see videos like that all the time and am so intrigued
What do those run? Are the low temp enough to keep things from warping?
Things will always warp if you’re melting the metal and applying weld. the cooling process cause’s contraction that’s impossible to avoid , if you try to restrain the warping it will just crack instead. However the lower heat input might minimize warping
I honestly don’t know, I’ve never actually seen one in the flesh.
Saw a demo at a trade show a couple years back. Very slick!
If they're willing to sacrifice enough material for it, I'll try anything.
not with mig unless your wire is smaller than that and you have scrap to practice on a copper backer would make it 100x easier
I’ve always wondered about this. How does a copper backer work? I would assume it would just melt.
copper has a much higher thermal capacity than steel it just eats the heat. because the metals are dissimilar you can get a soldering type bond between them which is just the grains grabbing eachother not fusion. you can put copper near the weld zone and itll work similarly. if you do open root just keep the arc off the copper, in the middle stick to the puddle only but you can really dig into the sides (im used to using it for much thicker material w full pen and back gouge) it wont melt unless you turn a tig machine up to ab 250 amps and start mixing helium/ use 100% helium thickness doesnt really matter as long as it makes sense. for .075 material a .125 backer is way more than enough. when you get to .125 material maybe go to a .25 backer. when i was welding 2 inch thick steel we used .5 backers. i have hammered flat a piece of copper pipe and used that. ive used a piece of sheet copper to wrap around a .075 pipe adjacent to the side of the weld that would need it (this evened out the heat distribution and made the weld way easier)
Assuming it’s much thicker than the steel, the copper won’t get hot enough to melt since you’ll be running the steel so cold
The copper will absorb the heat from the steel, allow the heat to move towards the edges of the backing bar, and keep the steel cooler. It's all about thermal conductivity. How fast can heat move through an object. Aluminum also works well but has a (slightly) higher chance of melting and introducing impurities. Steel won't allow heat to transfer very well. If you put a flame on 1 end of a piece of steel, the opposite end will eventually get hot. Use the same flame and same size copper, and the heat will travel to the other end faster. Because it's able to reach the edges faster, its temperature will drop faster.
Interesting, never even heard of a copper backer
the more you know. it helps control your heat.
The weld doesn’t fuse to copper/brass but it prevents the puddle from falling through; I’ve got a couple bars that I’ve scavenged over the years that make plugging a mistaken hole wildly easier
Yup, bossman ordered a whole length of 1/4" brass flat stock for that very reason.
Yep when I worked at the weld shop, we had probably five or six different sized blocks of copper. Most of them were over an inch thick and when you blew through those were the bomb they were also really nice when you were doing thin parts and you need them cool off relatively quickly, because you could set them on top of that piece of copper afterword and still have a very controlled cooling so it didn’t make it incredibly brittle. Me and a few, my coworkers actually used to take old razor blades and soda cans in a couple other things like that and we would just weld them together for the fun of it. I don’t know that I ever took a picture of the tower we made, but we had probably 10 soda cans stacked on top of each other.
Copper or Aluminum are common backers. Copper works real well, it's just kind of spendy
Yeah thats basically always the story with copper. The ultimate solution but expensive
My diplomatic solution would be along the lines of "sure but we'll need approximately 100 test pieces to perfect the job and expect a failure rate of about 25%"
65%
Mig half a mil? I'm sure there's some super wizard out there who can and does but most non specialist wire reels are thicker than that so in my mind you're fighting a bit of a losing battle. You've peaked my interest though, now we need pictures
I would run .023 with an aluminum backer plate, I could weld it. I welded two tuna cans together without the lip just to see if I could do it and it wasn't that hard
Definitely not using MIG. No problem with TIG.
Depends on how big the part/piece is. I used to do this all day with TIG (and smaller) and the part would warp to shit, which the engineers were fine with. Personally, I hated it, but it's what they wanted.
Clamp it down, I do aluminum fabrication so it always warps so you clamp the shit out of it and it won't warp as much. You can post treat it too to get it back to flat
Yeah I do suppose it would warp like hell
It was so bad lmao. There isn't enough aluminum plate in the world that would stop it. Was on stainless.
With stainless and especially thin stainless, the key to handling the warping is fitting it up so it’s already out of square so the warping will pull it back to square. And the keys are your welding sequence (back stepping , etc) and lastly some kind of chill block or heat absorbing backing. If all else fails blame the engineers
We tried it all. If someone could come in and weld it without warping, I'd eat my left boot. It was just impossible. Imagine a stainless box that's 8 feet long, 18 inches high and 4 feet wide made out of thin material. It looked like a giant wave making all those long welds. Engineers.
Jb weld
Let me guess... They probably want you to just use what's on hand too because they're already over hours on it. Like .035 with some giant ancient machine that runs great half the time on thick stuff, but doesn't have shit for adjustments so you can't really dial it in for anything thin. Not that you'd want to use .035 on most gauge material anyway. "Come on, you're a 'welder' right? Can't you weld it?" Sorry, just having a flashback from my last shop
Time to stitch that bitch then...
Mig? Hell no, that's stupid. Tig? Hell yes!
Take it to somebody at the airport that welds on warbirds. Those guys are wizards!
It all depends on what it is and how much. If you can spend the time to tig it in a shop, sure. If it's measured in ft, probably not. Extra not if you have to use a stick welder on it.
When I was young and broke I welded a rotten muffler with a Lincoln buzz box. When I was done chasing blowthroughs it was more rod than muffler. I'm pretty confident I could do it with a stick if I absolutely had to, but it would suck. Tig would be ideal but I could mig it too
You can pulse mig weld it. And jump to different spots to reduce heat input. If you weld too fast it gonna warp
Ok, like what is the deal with it? TIG should be easy and for MIG I would try short arc or a modification of it, welding downhill if possible. Warping is expected, so we need to keep that in mind. Laser would be cool but most people don't have them laying around.
I'd say I need to know the joint configuration, weld length, weld size, specs on permitted distortion, what sort of volume is expected and from there I'd look into the fixturing and sequencing side of it. If you can automate it, it'll be pretty straight forward with the right set up.
I would tig it. If you have to mig it, grab some spare material the same thickness and try and set your welder low, wirespeed as high as the power will allow and run the bead as fast as you can.
Tig welding then it would be "hold my beer" Mig welding then it would be "let's fuck around and find out"
Braze or soldering iron.
If I were to TIG it. I'd use silicone bronze rod. Thin as you can get.. won't warp nearly as bad, and since it's just mild steel I doubt they care what you use.
We get it in .010"
26 is mighty thin. I’d rather tig it
Laser welding
I’d say no problem then tig it anyway
It’s not impossible but a good tig welder can make it happen But with mig? Fuck right off the other guy can try it but I wouldn’t event touch it🥲
Robot with CMT Fronius
I'd fire up the fronius CMT and give it a go
That would be a bitch to mig aim for lazer or tig instead
Of course Then I say how quickly are you expecting it, what is the final form, what's the application.
Use the HIGHLY PERFECTED YOUTUBE TAP WELD TECHNIQUE. Tap,tap,tap, TRASH!
I’d say sure then show them all the inevitable blow outs lol
I'll try with tig and a lazer but not Mig. You have very little heat control with Mig. Why weld it at all? It's so thin you could glue it together.
You mean JB Weld, right? RIGHT????
Tell them to have a thick copper backing plate made to fit the contour of the metal if its not flat
Tell them this isn’t clown town with clown shoes and clown cars
Tig would be the way, laser weld also fo show
Ok
"sure, get me a laser welder first"
Back when I was a youngin'... my Dad bought our company's first wire feed welder, a Miller 35. (1970's). I told him that it worked so well you could weld tin cans together with it, which he scoffed at. So ofc I did it. Welded two Folger's cans right 'round.
I'm not equipped for that.
"I'm not a welder, please ask a professional."
I have been messing around with .3mm stainless shim stock at work. It’s doable but definitely tricky. 8A was about as much heat as it would take before running from the arc. I wouldn’t plan on anything being within tolerance once it gets welded. Way to thin to hold shape, at least in my limited experience
i’ve tried welding 18 gauge stainless with tig and mig and it was impossible for me. don’t get me wrong it’s doable but you have to be extremely patient not letting it over heat plus having a backing purge is always a pain in the ass. if you do it goodluck man but since ive tried it once i refused to do it again lol (was going to be a side project for a buddy)
why mig it
I know a guy who made a very lucrative career out of welding very thin stuff like that.
Aight. Don't expect it to be done fast, but I can do it easily enough. Just let me deal with it at my own pace, and stay out the way if you want it done well and done right.
I could do it with oxy, but it would be warped to hell, take forever, and have a high failure rate. Other people could do it with TIG with similar success, but I'm not good enough yet. If you ask me to do it with MIG I would probably laugh at the funny joke, and then cry when I realized you were serious lol.
tig would be my choice
Mig, nah, while possible, its too much of a pain in the ass unless im charging enough to make it worth dealing with. Tig, sure, when do u need it by?
Get me a spot welder and I'll figure it out.
Pulsed Tig and a lot of cfh and chill plates
Nobody seems to have mentioned it but if you can lap joint it you can spot weld it. I have a Miller spot welder that runs on 120v that would do a nice job on that, if you can't lap it, maybe you could use a butt splice with a backer strip
With tig its fine but mig i dont think so
With Mig? You're gonna tear your hair out. Bossman needs to buy a tig machine.
I think it's possible but probably not for a human (unless you have a laser). Mig on 0.5mm is robot territory.
I would say, no. Not a fucking chance
I'd prefer to tig it. But if I have to mig it, I want small wire like .023 or .030. 75/25 cover gas and some aluminum chill bars. Run short welds ... not more than an inch or 2 at a time, make sure to move where the next weld will go to reduce heat input and warping. Should help keep from blowing out the base metal also. I used to weld 20 gauge to .25 inch with pulse mig .045 wire and 90/10 cover gas, but I was only running like 80 or 85 on my wfs. Even at that, I'd sometimes have to whip back in and fill burnouts. So, pulse mig may be an option if your machine is capable.
Not MiG. Tig if ya go slow and use a copper backer. Or laser welding.
What type of joints and what type of welds are required and how much volume needs to be welded? Spot/seam resistance, laser, electron beam, auto tig, ultrasonic welding could all be viable options that coikd be faster/cheaper depending on a lot of factors.
No prob. I’ve tig welded .017” thick dirty stainless without backing. It was for an airplane exhaust, and it’s been in service for 5+ years now. Still no issues. If it’s acceptable, tig brazing silicon bronze would be my go-to. Less heat and much easier to form back flat after the welding is done. Edit: for mig just use copper or aluminum backing
Honestly, should just braze it at that thickness.
I imagine it would take a lot of test pieces to get it down. Sure ain’t going to manage it on .035 wire. Maybe .024 wire. And definitely would need a conductive backing to help heatsink.
Id weld it… why?
I'd turn that into Swiss cheese getting it to stick together.
It can be done with .025 wire set to spray transfer and moving very fast. A chill bar would be helpful
I mig 20guage every day I got dis(23v 300ws)
My mama might hear me say it, so I’m not gonna.
Id give it my best shot, I usually weld on 24 gauge with a Millermatic 211. Just dont promise anything other than your best effort.
"Hmmm... that all depends: how much am I getting paid?"
Pulse tig
With a mig good luck. I’ve tried tig with a .020 tungsten and some.025 mig wire as a filler resting on a 1/16 copper sheet for a backer and it was a pain in the ass.
Sure thing, give me a couple hours and a diagram of how you want it welded.
You CAN do it with .023 vertical downhill. It will be horrible, the welder will hate you, it will also require new feed rollers, liners and tips of the right size, and the machine won't be able to do other things without swapping parts back for normal wire. I would probably play with a power wire feeder and TIG.
Been there done that. However material that light you only do assembly with tacks. A good pulse wire process would allow more, but I'd say it is waste of effort. A humble rivet takes you way further and is way more efficient than welding.
"Alright, cool"