Welding An Alloy Block?

[Issam 0]

Ok Guys,

Thanks to Bally I am back here.

Has anyone successfully welded AN fittings to the alloy block without warping it?

Looking for any and all input if possible.

[Cameron 16]

Its probably not warping that you have to worry about, its cleanliness. If you have even the slightest speck of dirt, grease or oil on either side of the weld area (as in outer and inner surfaces) you'll get porosity and it'll leak.

[Issam 0]

Its probably not warping that you have to worry about, its cleanliness. If you have even the slightest speck of dirt, grease or oil on either side of the weld area (as in outer and inner surfaces) you'll get porosity and it'll leak.

Block will be sonic cleaned and blasted with baking soda before it happens.

[wracing 19]

why not just thread them in, the weld will never be that great/strong and the materials will be dissimilar.

 

i thought the best way would be to bore, tap teh hole to the fittling?

 

james

[Cameron 16]

Weeeell, just an example for you.. We had some gearbox casings that needed modifying and they were vapour blasted with fresh media and special degreaser, then the weld areas roloc'd back to nice clean metal, then blasted again and thoroughly cleaned and dried and we still had problems with porosity! I had similar problems when welding up my XU10 sump which had gone through the same cleaning process. I don't know if its because the cast alloy is slightly porous, and oil will get in under the surface or what, but it was a bitch!

 

By all means give it a try, I don't know how good soda blasting is at removing ingrained oil, it might be better than our vapour blaster. But it'd probably be a bit less hassle to do what James said.

Edited September 24, 2009 by Cameron

[Issam 0]

why not just thread them in, the weld will never be that great/strong and the materials will be dissimilar.

 

i thought the best way would be to bore, tap teh hole to the fittling?

 

james

I thought about that but in some areas you simply cant just drill and tap.

Why does Pug aluminum have to be so poor?

[Rippthrough 98]

You'd have more luck using a lot softer/more ductile welding rod than the ally you are welding - it's probably hairline cracks appearing as the weld pool cools and builds up stress as it shrinks.

 

Of course, the problem then is, you've got a really soft weld...