so i decided today at the welding shop to ask about sticks for arc welding aluminum, i asked if i can use these rods with AC, the guy didn't know so he gave me 5 rods to play with and let him know how it goes, well to google i went for a spec sheet on aluminum rod and bah... DC only, well dang there goes my hopes of trying to learn something new this weekend, ohwell, now before i go hook up 2 car batteries and make a redneck welder, anyone know how to convert an ac welder to ac / dc? I can't see it being all that hard, all that would be needed is a burly rectifier bridge, and a capacitor or 2. so anyone here done it? and yes i understand that stick welding aluminum is hard to say the least. but i wanna learn something new. so how do i do it?
Are stick welders the opposite to a tig? Asking because i've never stick welded aluminium but on a tig you need it set to AC to weld aluminium, DC is for stainless and mild steel. Unless you yanks have it all backwards
No you can weld aluminium without a pulse setting. We mig weld ally at my work and i chopped and welded my aluminium posts for my roadster with my tig, and didn't use the pulse setting.
Thats a lot of work and parts to convert the arc to DC, My old buzz box was reversable and had a AC/DC setting. I now use a TIG for aluminum. Get another box.
Your going to find that diodes large enough to handle the current are expensive. I added the DC capability to a Montgomery Wards cracker box and it work s well. A warning though. Check your windings in your box to see what they are made of. If yours are copper then you have no problem. Mine was made of aluminum. It works good on steel but aluminum rods are a different story. The first time I tried welding aluminum I could see the box out of the corner of my eye. When I struck an arc I also saw an arc out of the box. I believe the aluminum in the box tried to become part of the welding process kind of a sacrifical thing. Thats my best guess so I never tried it again. I stick to welding steel with it. I hardly ever use it anymore. The first time I welded with aluminum rod was during 2 weeks active duty in the Navy reserves in Pensacola Fl. in the 80s. They needed two 4' fold down platforms about 40' long welded up for a twin hull barge used for dragging student navigators with parachutes thru the water for their survival training. The machine was a gas powered dc arc welder and it worked very well. Bang for the buck get another machine but if you want to see a picture of my set up I can open the machine and take a couple of pictures.
well i do have some aluminum lieing around so i am gonna give it a try and see what happens... an AC / DC welder is out of my price range right now, but if ya wanna take some pictures jbtime that would be cool, my miller is old so I would ***ume that its got copper windings, and yeah if it turns out to be an expensive venture i am just going to give the welding rods back to the guy that gave em to me. i don't need to weld aluminum, just thought it would be cool to try...
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