Welding sheet metal often requires a beautiful, smooth weld line. Also, reduce the tungsten, stick electrode, or MIG wire diameter to the lower amperage accordingly. If your current amperage setting burns through the metal, try dropping it 30-50%. This choice is also helpful in preventing warpage, but if the material is too thin and you keep blowing holes through it, you’ll need all the help you can get. Use a shop air compressor to cool the sheet metal between welds. For example, divide the joint’s length by four, mark the divisions, and fuse each separately. Try to weld the joint from multiple positions. So, increase your welding speed and place short, intermittent welds. Some excessive heat warps the metal sheet, but too much burns it away. If you blow holes in the metal, you’ve gone further in the wrong direction. Burn throughsĮverything we discussed to avoid warping applies to preventing burn through. So, placing aluminum or copper flat bars underneath the workpieces can help prevent heat build-up and warping. Pros often use heatsinks to help conduct excess heat away from the welded metal. Low welding speed is especially detrimental to stainless steel. Therefore, increasing your travel speed eliminates one of those variables. If you weld too slowly, you’ll focus too much heat on one area. Too much heat at one time in one place causes warpage. If your welder doesn’t support a tack timer, you may keep the arc lit for too long on some tack welds, which inputs too much heat compared to the other tacks, warping the material.Īlso, try to increase your welding speed. For example, Eastwood MIG 180 lets you create repeatable tack welds with the same amperage input and arc duration. It’s best if your welder supports a tack weld timer. Avoid long, continuous welds that input high amounts of heat. To avoid warping the metal, you must tack weld metal sheets in place and avoid significant gaps between the tacks.Īfter you tack everything, place intermittent welds. Now that we’ve covered the essential considerations for different arc welding processes, let’s discuss how to prevent and fix common issues when welding sheet metal. Avoiding or Fixing Problems When Welding Thin Metal As a result, it’s easier to control warping and prevent burning through thin stock.įinally, keep the amperage output as low as possible when welding, but this goes for all arc welding processes when joining thin materials. So, some stick electrodes like E6013 offer very shallow penetration, which you need to weld thin metal.Īdditionally, using a DCEN polarity reduces heat input and metal deposition rate. Instead, the flux covering on the consumable electrode protects the weld pool but also influences the arc’s characteristics. Unlike MIG and TIG, stick welding doesn’t require a shielding gas. Stick welding is not a delicate process but with a proper setup and rod size, you can weld sheet metal with the SMAW. It’s difficult to control your heat input and very easy to burn through the material. Most welders avoid welding thin metal with the stick welding process. Give yourself the best chance of success by using a gas lens to improve gas coverage and pushing your weld to avoid unnecessary penetration. It’s best to stick to pure argon shielding gas when TIG welding thin gauges. Grinding the TIG tungsten to a sharp point reduces penetration which is ideal for thin metals.Īvoid helium-argon shielding gas mixtures because helium improves the heat input.
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