Best Welder For "Weekend Hacker"

[philbey]

Yeh you can weld stainless to carbon, you generally use a stainless rod though, not a carbon rod. Stainless is just an alloy of steel of steel with a minimum amount of chromium in it (Simlarly so with chromoly steel)

 

Thin metal welding with stick is tricky for new players because the fine line between getting a nice arc and just getting the rod stuck takes a bit of getting used to.

[Spencer[RL]]

I agree Phil done some thin welding with stick and just blew holes in it or just got stuck :bash:

Phil would you go stick or gasless mig?

 

Cheers

[ninja-philbo]

il do it just bring it over man its only about 2 hour drive according to the yanks

 

man i tig all my stainless and alloy but if u had to gassless mig with .6 wire will be ur best mate just take it slow man and get some practice up first ul have to seal it up from rusting too

 

but u can get cheap gas/gasless welders now days to do jobs like this and a bottle of gas only costs between 150-200 ur better off getting all the gear and doing it properly then when u trust urself make extractors and and exhaust polish em all up and show em off heaps haha

 

and i use the same gas (argon) for my alloy work too so if u want/need to just change ur wire and bust out some alloy work save some cashola

Edited June 4, 2011 by philbey

[19914afc]

I welded a peice of stainless pipe at the back of my car before I got my exhaust done, just used mild steel rods worked ok not as neat as a mig but it worked.

[carbonboy]

Edit: Philbey quotes the text from here further down, I'm just gonna sit in the corner & learn me something! :yes: :laff:

Edited June 24, 2011 by carbonboy

[springersrolla]

use cigweld weldalls. should be able to pick them up from bunnings or a half decent hardware store, go 2.4mm and run low amps, 40-60, see how you go. most of the pipe i weld is stainless or cast iron, perfect and airtight. Just go slow, practice, if you burn thru its too hot. how thick is the stainless pipe your welding?

 

most of the biggest pipe weld jobs in the world are done by stick you should be right welding bits of little bits

[mrg187]

Was welding fairly thin ss pipe today at work, was using chrome rods forgot the exact name but they were 2.5's.. Was blowing through at the start, ran lower amps about 60-70 and i literally done stop/starts the whole way round on opposite sides to distribute heat..

 

Worked out good in the end, cleaned it up a bit n looked nice. But just find out the thickness n try to get some scrap and play around till u realise its limits....

[Spencer[RL]]

Cheers mrg187

 

Please could you get some the name of the rods so I can do some more investigation on how small they go.

Why are you stick welding ss pipes? :huh:

[springersrolla]

dude cigweld weldalls. thats what there called, designed for stainless 2.5mm low amps job done

[20vT]

Mate, I would really recommend getting it tig'd up even if i costs you a little bit the result will be far nicer, and welding stainless with a tig is you can get ahold of one isn't that hard it seems to pool alot smoother and is generally nicer to weld than mild steel. Most may probably disagree with me but I would go to the trouble of purging the tube while welding it too, helps with penetration and makes the inside look alot smoother,

 

 

 

My 2c anyway

[ninja-philbo]

yeah springers on it mate out on the feild all i got is my stick and it gets the job done as he said 99 percent of ur high pressure water pipelines and gass lines and welded with stick welders turn it down and go slow ul get it done

[20vT]

If you have arc force adjustment it may help you too with the thinner walled stuff

[springersrolla]

at the end of the day tig will far outperform any visual appearence. if all u got is a stick at home the job is still acheiveable. play around, practise on scrap. f@$k after the first few welds you;l know if your confident, capable and ready to do it

[mrg187]

Cheers mrg187

 

Please could you get some the name of the rods so I can do some more investigation on how small they go.

Why are you stick welding ss pipes? :huh:

 

Yea no worries mate, ill have to wait till monday though..

 

And i work on site as maintainance at a factory. Can't use mig or tig cause the gas bottles are too heavy and inpractacal when u have the climb up ladders n everything lol. And wind, impossible to weld mig/tig when it windy and flux cored is shit (gasless).. We don't even own a mig. Just a couple tig's in the

workshop.

Edited June 10, 2011 by mrg187

[philbey]

It also has bugger all iron in the mix, well if it's a decent grade stainless (i.e 316L) that is. If you've got 'stainless' steel thats magnetic or rusting, you've got yourself the cheap stuff (i.e 304).

 

If you think there's not a lot of difference bewteen the two, get a nut/bolt of each grade, expose them to salt-water & check on them in three months time :wink:

 

 

Hah I dunno about bugger all iron, 316 stainless is still 70% iron! 304 and 316 are both fine in a non aggressive environment, on a car etc. Most of the time stainless rusts because it's poorly passivated or contaminated with carbon steel, like grinding spatter. Good way to passivate at home is get a stainless wire wheel and go over any welds. We've got a cool passivation wand at work but they're about 2 grand. You can also use a pickling paste but it,s nasty shit.

 

Mate, I would really recommend getting it tig'd up even if i costs you a little bit the result will be far nicer, and welding stainless with a tig is you can get ahold of one isn't that hard it seems to pool alot smoother and is generally nicer to weld than mild steel. Most may probably disagree with me but I would go to the trouble of purging the tube while welding it too, helps with penetration and makes the inside look alot smoother,

Yeh purging is the way to go with tube, otherwise you start popping and farting when you get to the end of the run and ruin a good weld haha.

 

yeah springers on it mate out on the feild all i got is my stick and it gets the job done as he said 99 percent of ur high pressure water pipelines and gass lines and welded with stick welders turn it down and go slow ul get it done

 

Often pressure pipe will be welded with a tig root run for strength then capped with arc, arcs the fastest method especially if you have to do 6 passes at each butt.

Edited June 4, 2011 by philbey