How thick was the section of the cap around the barbed fitting? What's the wall thickness of the fitting too? Unless they are a lot thinner than I'm thinking, they shouldn't have been that difficult to weld, at least not all of them. (I can see having an oops on one though for example, but not 8??)

Another option would be to use brass and silver solder the fittings in.

 

1/8" Rod?!?! Sheesh man.

I'll bet he went at it with a 1/8 tungsten too. For that small stuff you need smaller tungsten - should have been running a 1/16" tungsten I would say and at most a 1/16" filler rod. He's got the right equipment, just maybe not the right accessories and not using it properly heh.

My Lincoln TIG goes down to 5A and I've seen a lincoln welding trainer weld 2 pieces of tinfoil together with a similar machine.

 

That bites, IIRC pops did them manually, thats a ton of wasted work.

My bet is he has put a 1/2" fillet on 1/4" tube. Typical Aluminum bozo welder with a blunt tip!

It should not matter if they were thin as a beer can, I have tig welded more than one beer can and I can't weld aluminum worth a pigs ***!

Any competent Aluminum welder should have been able to put a nice clean micro weld no problem with any decent tig torch, proper cup size and properly ground tungsten.

Sorry to hear that, I know how it feels!

[edit]
It can be done easily with 1/8 rod and 1/8 tungsten no prob, the tip just needs to be properly ground.
I've never used anything but 1/8" and I have done some pretty fine welds, 1/16" wide.
[/edit]

-Enjoy
fh : )_~

 

humm now that someone mentioned it solder does sound like a real good idea easy and reworkable but more than enough to hold onto the temps and vibrations

 

Agreed that you can grind the tungsten as I've done it myself, and that it can be done with 1/8" rod. But it would definitely be much easier with at least a smaller filler rod.

 

The tungsten should be ground to a concave tip anyways. ie: the tungsten is held vertical to a round grinding wheel, then do about 1/8" of the tip at less of an angle to the grinding wheel, this causes the grinding marks to be length ways along the concave ground tip focusing the arc more precisely.

Yes, I agree, finer filler rod would definitely make it easier, however when welding fine beads very little filler is used, mostly you are just fusing your two components together with slight filler addition to ease the puddle along.

-Enjoy
fh : )_~

 

Yeah.. larger filler rod is no excuse for messing them all up. When I use thicker filler rod than what I'm welding I usually hold the rod on the part and then focus the arc on the filler material to melt off what I need into the puddle.

And by thin I'm talking welding 1/4" or 5/16" steel fuel line, which is about as thin as it gets really for normal items.

The heat/arc from a tig is so precise and controllable (when the tip is properly ground at least) that it's almost hard to mess stuff up... I love my tig.

Grounding your hand out and hitting the high frequency start to the filler rod sucks though.. lol part of my learning curve haha

 

I only dream of owning a tig torch, I've always had one around, then I moved to this rust bucket state and lost access to that and many other high end machine tools, 5 axis CNC's, Panagraphs, Auto Screw machines ... Talk about whip out some caps, before I moved here I could have set up an Auto loading CNC screw machine to whip out 1000 or so of them an hour, pretty and shiny and all done!

I still could ask pops but he is to old to be in the shop so he would have the hired help do it, something I'm against. (Not that I haven't done it on real special occasions)

-Enjoy
fh : )_~

 

These are 6061 aluminum, not steel. There was plenty there to seat the barbs and hold them still. The barb wall thickness was plenty thick. I don't know what the guy did. I wasn't there. Maybe his tip looked like the front end on a snub nose bus. I don't know. He destroyed one completely and the others look like hell. He caved in the barb hole on a few and looks like the aluminum flowed all over the cap. They're ruined.

 

I know for me to weld them I would have had to run to the welding supply and get smaller tungstens and filler rod, but I'm not set up for 'fine' aluminum welding. Steel it wouldn't have been an issue, I have the stuff here for that.

I also would do some serious thinking about how to even hold them to weld, a small welding positioner with some way of holding it would be ideal, but not something I have at this point.

Someone mentioned solder above, for those not in the know, solder and silver solder are very different beasts, silver solder, done correctly, is approaching the strength of welding in some applications.

 

I just got off the phone with him. At least he laughed it off. He's possibly going with a brass or maybe aluminum again and he's having his welder, who can do fine micro TIG or whatever needed, weld them this time so it's done right.

To be continued.

 

Yea, I'm sure pops has been down that road before ... It still sucks any way ya look at it.

There was nothing wrong with the parts, the gent that ruined them just doesn't have the necessary skills for delicate welding.

You mentioned they were 6061 - Not steel and I'm wondering why you mentioned that??

-Enjoy
fh : )_~

 

I saw some mention of steel and clarified it was 6061.

I think you're right about the 1/2" fillet. He actually flowed the filler into the fins at each end of the cap. My wife didn't know any better and I think the guy thought he did a pretty good job. I'm just glad my dad laughed about it.

 

Awe, Yup, Steel would be the wrong material.

Yup, Shows his wisdom!

-Enjoy
fh : )_~

 

I should have kept that clear,
Ma was a jewler so I know how to use sliver solder also have fixed some bandsaw blades and the like with it

but I do think I'd melt aluminum trying to use silver solder

on the other hand flux the parts up right and you could pull good lead solder into the clearances on those and I don't think they'd ever get hot enough to come back apart