Welding

[grbamford]

Just starting to play with welders. All of the work I've done is on 1/4in material or less. I've watched the work that Juergen Nies has done on his plane, replacing and fabricating parts. At some point in the future I know that 31D will need that kind of attention. What type of welder is appropriate for the work we do on the planes? What capability do I need in a welder to work on our planes?

Thanks,
Greg

[dgapilot]

Pretty much all welding on tube and fabric airplanes will be Oxy-Acetylene or TIG. You can get a gas rig for a couple hundred $ and be on your way or you can spend a lot more for a descent TIG welder. I have both but I've been doing this for about 50 years. Either way plan on spending hours, days, months practicing before you ever try and weld on your airplane. Get to be friends with an A&P/IA that knows tube and fabric airplanes. You will need him to sign off any welding you do as welding is considered Major Repairs and requires a 337.

Get texts on welding, you can start with Chapter 4 of AC43.13-1B and move on from there Lincoln Electric has some good books on GTAW welding (TIG) for gas welding search out texts from back in the 30s and 40s. One I refer to frequently is "Aircraft Welding"R.H Drake copyright 1947. Another is "Welders Bible" Don Geary Copyright 1980. There are lots of others, those are only 2 that I have in my office now. Have a bunch more on the bookshelf in the office. Ron Covell has a number of good welding books as does TM Technologies a web site run by Kent White.

Don't even think of a wire feed welder for aviation. They aren't really suitable for thin wall tubing. Welding is a skill that needs a LOT of practice to get good at. You will likely burn through several bottles of gas and literally about 100 lbs or more of steel before you will develop the skills necessary to do aircraft welding. Forget about playing with 1/4" stuff, you will be welding on stuff as thin as .016 and seldom any thicker than .063. If you choose to go the TIG route, I advise to start with aluminum. It is a little harder to start with but you will hone your skills faster. Of course for aluminum you need a more expensive machine that has AC and high frequency start. DC is used more for steel. This is the TIG welder I have PowerTIG 210EXT - TIG Welders | Everlast Generators There are others that will do the job for a little less but for the features this seemed to meet my needs.

[grbamford]

dgapilot,

Thanks an awesome response. I am already looking for the texts you included. I've just started peeling the onion on welding and am in no way ready to start putting heat to my plane. Right now I am borrowing a friends wire fed MIG welder. I'm using it to build shooting target stands for the range and friends who also want one. It go me to thinking about what a great skill set that it could be. It ought to be sometime before I have to think about getting under the fabric of 31D. After you wrote, I was talking with my A&P about what you said and I may have an in to the type equipment you're talking about and someone who knows how to work with.

Greg

[tferraro]

This is a good website for welding videos and details especially for tig welding all types of materials. Great videos and good information.

https://www.weldingtipsandtricks.com/

[Steve Pierce]

I have a Miller Synchrowave 10 that I have had for 25 years. It does everything on an airplane we have ever needed to do. I can weld but not good enough to weld on airplanes. I am surrounded by guys that weld ay Air Tractor all day every day so I have always paid them for the important stuff. I should take the time to get proficient but I haven't. I have a Vulcan MIG machine that I weld the Bungee Buddy tools and other stuff around the hangar. I have heard good things from some friends about the Everlast TIG machines. I like to weld and custom fabricate stuff, can't always buy or can offord some of the stuff I can make and the welders are important in that task. You can never have enough tools, equipment and skills.

[mmoyle]

With zero experience I strongly recommend taking a welding class at your local college. There is a science to welding 4130 thin wall tubing. Gas welding is easier than TIG welding. Just the act of gas welding does by its nature mostly eliminate problems that can be created by TIG welding. Primarily martensite crystal formation which is where cracks form and causes brittleness. Plus you’ll have an instructor to work you through bad habits, blow outs and puddle control. The nice thing is some colleges have destructive testing machines.


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[Gilbert Pierce]

I took a semester long welding class at the local technical college. We got lots of hands on with Gas, Tig and MiG.
I only use gas now. MiG is easy as I had lots of experience with stick welding. I never really mastered Tig. That is as much an art form as it is science.
As Mark said, it was a big help.

[dgapilot]

I have a Miller Synchrowave 10 that I have had for 25 years. It does everything on an airplane we have ever needed to do. I can weld but not good enough to weld on airplanes. I am surrounded by guys that weld ay Air Tractor all day every day so I have always paid them for the important stuff. I should take the time to get proficient but I haven't. I have a Vulcan MIG machine that I weld the Bungee Buddy tools and other stuff around the hangar. I have heard good things from some friends about the Everlast TIG machines. I like to weld and custom fabricate stuff, can't always buy or can offord some of the stuff I can make and the welders are important in that task. You can never have enough tools, equipment and skills.

Steve the Syncrowave should do everything an Everlast will do and it is US made. I'm not the best welder and usually practice for a day or two before I start welding on a fuselage or landing gear. If I'm welding AL, I'll practice a little longer as your skill need to be more refined. There are some things that are just easier to do with gas though!

One thing I forgot to mention, with welding CLEANLINESS is next to GODLINESS! Don't even think about trying to weld through mill scale or dirty metal or paint. Even "Weldable Primer" is hard to get a good weld with. Clean everything within the heat zone with wire brush or other abrasive then wipe with acetone. If you are even thinking about aluminum or stainless, keep all your abrasives and tools separate for each material, carbon steel, stainless and aluminum. Likewise if you have a fixture table that is steel, have an aluminum plate to put down for your aluminum work and a stainless plate for your stainless work.

[Jim]

Hi,

I have a TIG which is way too sensitive for the amount of shaking I do now. If you can't operate the torch/handle without moving around by a 16th" or so you'll go nuts with all the tungsten dipping and regrinding points. Just a tad of material on the tungsten will change the arch shape/direction and how you were going along before the dip. I can, almost, do well on the bench but I need to constantly position/clamp/pile things to rest both hands on. Fun process though. I just tacked my latest project and had a welder friend of mine do the final passes so I could proceed from there. Resting the cup on the work helped me get into several hard spots for me, especially the overheads. I wasted a LOT of gas in the process for the work I was doing.

I gained a lot of respect for the welding done by Piper, especially their attaching the thin wall channel.

[dgapilot]

Hi,

I have a TIG which is way too sensitive for the amount of shaking I do now. If you can't operate the torch/handle without moving around by a 16th" or so you'll go nuts with all the tungsten dipping and regrinding points. Just a tad of material on the tungsten will change the arch shape/direction and how you were going along before the dip. I can, almost, do well on the bench but I need to constantly position/clamp/pile things to rest both hands on. Fun process though. I just tacked my latest project and had a welder friend of mine do the final passes so I could proceed from there. Resting the cup on the work helped me get into several hard spots for me, especially the overheads. I wasted a LOT of gas in the process for the work I was doing.

I gained a lot of respect for the welding done by Piper, especially their attaching the thin wall channel.

And that was all done with gas!


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