Welding Cart - Open Concept part2

click here to see the part 1 article of the open concept welding cart project

This is part 2 of this open cart welder cart project.

in this video you will see:

• cutting welds using a grinder and chisel
• Tack welding using a torch switch
• tig welding (brazing) zinc coated steel using silicon bronze
• ...and lots more

in case you missed it see part 1 below

learn more about the MagTab at weldmonger.com

PArt 2 of the open concept welding cart project

This is part 2 of the open concept welding cart project.

I noticed that the power cable coming out of the back of the lincoln powermig 210mp ran smack dab into the rear cross brace.

So using a cutting wheel on a 4-1/2” angle grinder, I cut the welds and used a cold chisel to separate them.

After grinding the old weld off, I re positioned the cross brace to a lower position and tacked and welded  it out with Tig …using a technique that is really fast.

I set the amperage to 150 and must left the wire in the puddle.  The result is a weld that looks almost like a mig weld.

Why tig weld hot with the wire left in the puddle? 

Well for starters, there are times when all you have is a tig welder and you just want to get a job completed.

It reminded me of a time when I had to fabricate a bunch of temporary pipe supports out of unistrut. ( unistrut is like 3 sided square tubing with the edges rolled under that allow for spring loaded nuts to be used for clamping stuff)

The project was on a nuclear power plant and so any rod used was requisitioned each day and you could only get rods if you were certified in that process. 

I was tig welding a lot of carbon steel pipe, and was certified for tig welding pipe so all I had were tig rods.  I could have used 7018 since I was a combo welder but the unistrut was only about 1/8” (3.2mm) thick.  

It was a lot quicker and cleaner to just turn up the amperage on the tig welder and leave the wire in the puddle.

And the surprising thing was how quick I could weld using a tig welder.

  The welds didnt have any distinct ripples like they do when you dab…but did I mention I was making temporary pipe supports that would be scrapped after the permanent pipe supports were installed?

Welding hot with lay wire is not going to impress anyone with appearance as compared to the “ stack of dimes” appearance.  
But it sure is a lot faster for building fixtures, and temporary supports….and other jobs where looks are not the main thing.

Actually, when the metal is properly cleaned, a hot lay wire tig weld can look very good.

Tig welding galvanized using silicon bronze rod

Galvanized and other zinc coated steel tend to outgas when you weld them. When I say outgas, I mean the puddle seems to spit.

That's because zinc has a very mow melting temp and actually boils when arc welded.

But silicon bronze also has a low melt point and can be used very effectively to tig weld galvanized and zinc coated steels.

But in order to do this you need to...

lower amperage ( I used 80 amps )  it helps to use a much lower amperage than you would normally use to weld steel.

I would have probably used around 120 amps to weld with er70s-2 but I only used 80 amps using the silicon bronze.

Another thing is to remember that you are only trying to flow metal into the joint (thats why its called tig brazing) and so add rod frequently and try not to step out too far in between additions of silicon bronze rod.