How To Weld Thin Sheet Metal With Arc Welder

Mig welding for thin metal.

How to weld thin sheet metal with arc welder.

It is an arc welding process that where you feed a solid wire electrode through a welding gun. And then stop to allow the weld to cool down before restarting again. In order to avoid the usual problems that come with welding thin metal you should carefully consider the process you are using. While welding work back and forth over the seam or opening and cover each area twice in order to properly join 2 surfaces together.

You are basically burning the rods down on top of the metal in straight lines. Weld in the vertical down position weld 6 in. Years ago i bought the stitch welder accessory from them and with the 1 16 electrodes it works well on thin sheet. Metal inert gas is then used to protect the weld from contaminants.

A good heat setting for 1 8 6011 rods on thin material is about 80 90 amps. If all you ve got is a stick welder and you need to weld some 1 6 mm square hollow section it can be done. Welding in a sequence that limits the amount of heat can help minimize distortion in thin material. Everyone is different but those settings will get you in the right ballpark to weld sheet metal.

Just grab a piece of sheet metal to get the heat set correctly and go to town. Set up your arc welder to straight polarity dcen that will keep the heat on the rod and not on the base metal dial down to 20 30 amps set up the sheet preferably over two bricks so that the bottom of the sheet is hanging in the air. This video shows a basic t joint using 6013 grade. You ll also need to use an arc welder since a mig welder won t properly join the galvanized steel together.

Precision welding methods are preferable like pulsed gas metal arc welding gmaw p short circuiting transfer gas metal arc welding gmaw pulsed gtaw and gas tungsten arc welding gtaw. For 3 32 7018 s it s about the same. Mig welding is one of the simplest to use for welding. The stitch welder has a solenoid that pulsates the rod and also a diode that can be engaged to convert the buzz box output to dc.

Another thing that helps is if you can temporarily back up the weld with copper.