Aluminum welding...I had to bite my tongue.

I'm working in a place that sells some welding supplies. A new customer has some aluminum welding to do and wants to use MIG with his existing machine. He wants to buy a 12 ft. MIG gun with a teflon liner to run .035 aluminum wire and .035 drive rolls. My boss, who thinks he knows welding, says a standard liner will work just fine. A teflon liner would only be needed on a 15 or 20 ft. gun. 15 ft. is the longest standard MIG gun. I've heard of custom made long guns but only for large diameter steel wires. I know the boss would have been offended if I said anything so I didn't. I haven't done a lot of aluminum but know people who have. Trying to feed aluminum through a standard MIG gun is just a recipe for frustration. If you had maybe a 10 ft. gun, special liner and the feeder hanging above the work with the cable dead straight maybe? it might work. Feeding steel wire can be tricky at times. Aluminum is a lot softer. There is a good reason spool guns and push/pull feeders like a Cobra-Matic were invented. So you could weld aluminum with MIG. I tried to ask the boss how much they had to do but he insists it will work fine with a standard liner and 12 ft. gun. It would make more sense to me to tell the customer that there are better options for doing aluminum than to sell them something else just to get a sale. I think the customer would appreciate it as well. As it is I think the customer is wasting a couple hundred dollars on another MIG gun. What can you do? It's not my place to say so I'm biting my tongue. Dave

Hi Dave! Yeah you're between a rock and a hard spot.
I tried this back in the mid 1980's, had a Miller 450-amp diesel engine drive welder with CV and a S-32-S wire feeder. I bought the 10-foot Tweeco gun with teflon liner, and “U”-grooved drive rolls. As you say kept the gun as straight as possible at all times, and above the work. It worked but on the razor's edge at all times! Sure wouldn't want to do this in a production mode! The 10-foot gun alone is a pain, even if it's hanging from an overhead boom.

Hopefully this customer has a lot of patiences, he'll need it when cutting the rat's nest out of the drive rolls! And hopefully he's going to be running 5356 instead of 4043!

Hi Dave,

I agree as even if you used a new steel liner, the wires gonna ball very quickly and IMO a waste of time. The drive rolls probably have some very sharp edges by now from the steel wire.

If the guy doesn't have allot of welding then gas welding would be more cost effective. Just tell him too watch when the molten surface crinkles then add filler and move and don't diddle around as your close too burn threw at that point.

T_Bone

BTDT and cut many a rats nest out of the drive rolls. A spool gun works much better but is heavier and harder to reach into tight spaces. Pushing aluminum wire is like pushing string.

If you had suggested something better you may have lost your job. An employee of CountryWide Bank tried to tell them about all those mortgages they were giving out to people with bad credit, no money for down payments or for settlement fees
was a bad banking. So they fired him.

When I worked for the US Government they had signs everywhere wanting you to submit suggestions. One man suggested back in the early 1970's to shutoff all the furnaces over the weekend and they gave him a big cash award. That was one of of the coldest winters we had and it froze most water pipes and ruin hot water furnaces. It caused a lot of water damage too.

In the late 1980's I submitted a suggestion on an easy solution as to how keep the 105mm tank rounds in the M60 Tank from falling out of the ammo racks. It would've probably been a big award since it was a safety issue too. I was told it was my job so I retired. Hal

I admire the man who can weld aluminum with a torch. I can't - looks like a nasty shameful mess when I'm done.

Paul

Probably lost a customer - maybe more than one.
You were between a rock and a hard place.

Paul

I agree, that's a tough situation. I have fed aluminum through my 10ft gun on a few ocasions but it usually ended up being a royal pain. I now have a tig as well and am probably one of the worst aluminum welders you ever saw with it. But I will still take that over fighting with the mig. A spool gun is by far the way to go if you plan on any kind of pleasant welding with the mig.

Well you didnt have any choice.Maybe the boss doesnt know that you can only push aluminum maybe through a 10 ft teflon liner?Its not up to you to teach him this stuff if he wont listen,but when that guy comes back mad about it and he gives him his money back he might learn something.Its not easy to push aluminum wire through a 10 ft teflon liner much less a 12 or 15 ft one.If the boss was going to sell him something he should have sold him a spool gun.Maybe he will once the guy sees its not going to work.

Like you said spool guns were made for a reason. This guy will get talking to someone else and figure out that someone is trying to make double sales off of him. Likely end up being a lost customer

Hello puddles,
You are right about the 5356, that 4043 will have rats nests the size of beavers.
Guido.

Hi Dave,

I understand that the gist of your posting is about the dilemma of working for somebody who doesn't know as much as he thinks he does, but after reading it several times I still couldn't figure out what the customer bought from your shop. From what you say that your boss told the customer, it doesn't sound like he would have needed to buy anything from you since he already owned a MIG welder. It makes some difference in trying to figure out what, if anything, you can reasonably do under similar circumstances should the situation arise again.

All the best, Stan

My boss is very set in his ways. He' said he used to run a couple big shops, however he is a machinist by trade and not a welder. If I make even the slightest suggestion, he seems to get insulted. I should clarify for Stan. The customer wanted a shorter MIG gun for the aluminum and my boss had an old stock 12 ft. gun. The customer wanted a teflon liner but my boss didn't think it would be needed on a 12 ft. gun! The gun and U drive rolls for aluminum will cost about $300! I wanted to voice my opinion but it wasn't really my place. If the boss was a little more open, I would have said it's going to be a real pain to get it to work. I did mention to boss's dad today that it might not work too good. If I was a customer, I'd sure appreciate a supplier letting me know the best solution rather than just trying to get rid of old stock. The way things are going, I bet the gun and drive rolls come back and I get blamed for not saying it wouldn't work. I took the job because I needed a little money over the winter. I'm almost regretting it. I make a fraction of what I would as a welder and get all the grunt jobs. I'm stuck doing 65 pages of unorganized inventory all by myself! It's a real pain. I'm afraid to tell the boss his system is retarded. Nothing is in order and some boxes have over 100 different items in them. I have to go through pages and pages to find stuff. Did I mention that my boss thinks he's the most organized person on the planet. Sorry, had to vent. Dave

dont know the circumstances of his welding, but for small jobs that arent thin he may be able to get by with aluminum stick welding.

A Trailblazer 55 is a nice machine. I think the customer would almost be better using stick aluminum rods. I tried to ease into it by asking how much they had to do but got cut off. The boss says his sales of bandsaw blades are way up but his sales of welding supplies(limited welding supplies) are way down. The salesman he hired has absolutely no clue about welding. He's a nice enough guy and the boss thinks he's great but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why his sales are down. He was thinking of hiring another salesman and had some really good applications from people who worked for large welding supplies. He threw them all out because the people never followed up on their applications! How dumb is that? I think a good knowledgable salesman would make the boss' head spin. The boss is moody and like I said, thinks he has it all figured out. I almost quit today. At the meeting this morning, the boss was mad because I left a partially completed box and parts on the bench. He could have said in a nice way that maybe I could put the counted parts in another box so I could take them off the counter. Very frustrating! I finally posted about something that everyone agrees with. What's up with that? LoL Dave

Hi Dave,

My prediction is that there's nothing you will be able to do to get things on a better footing with your boss, and nothing good will come of that job. Unloading an expensive piece of inappropriate equipment on a customer goes beyond misinformed. Your observation that the boss thinks he is highly organized when actually the opposite is true suggests to me that the situation is impossible (based on a similar situation I went through.) Good luck, though.

Stan

That is tricky stuff- so hot short- kinda like switching to a Ferarri after driving a Model T- puddle for-m- gone. Dang. Puddle formi-ng- gone. Dang Ha ha.

And I agree with you 135. Try to look on the bright side with your dud boss. There is always a brighter side of you look close enough...

I haven't forgotten you Paul. I'll write something up on gas welding AL when I get a chance. It's not that hard to do.

T_Bone