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Anyone else have any experience with a Spool gun. Tips, tricks?
You probably know but get a couple stainless wire brushes and clean it first. I love using the spool guns, they are wonderful and running it hotter might might it penetrate better at first but Aluminum is not as forgiving as steel so if it is welding you’re probably pretty close. If you’re not close you will know because nothing goes right. When I first started using mine I could not believe how much smoke there was. Double check the duty rating and max amps because the spool guns are usually quite limited. What you did does look good. (y)
 
Discussion starter · #23 ·
I have had much better results at my house with helium/ argon or straight helium for aluminum on the TIG. Looks like you are getting there with your setup, I have never used a MIG.
 
Winner winner chicken dinner.

I bought a Spool gun for my Hobart 210 from Northern Tool. They're having a 40th anniversary sale, everything that fits in one of their buckets is 15% off. I crammed the spool gun into one and it deformed the bucket into an oblong thing, but I got 15 % off.

Anyone else have any experience with a Spool gun. Tips, tricks?

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I've got the same spoolgun and Hobart 210 MVP welder. Your question is answered but yet, Argon is for TIG and Aluminum.

The spool gun is very sensitive to the heat inputs, much more so than welding steel. You need to react quickly to changes that need to be made and running longer beads can easily blow through as the heat builds very quickly and the puddle gets large FAST.

Made some railings for a friends dock. Man the materials was $$$$$.

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The Miller Maxstar 150 STL came with a 40CF bottle of Argon. I now have a 125CF bottle of Argon too that is unused. Need to put the time into learning TIG. Dabbled a little but far from getting it down.

My logger buddies came over Friday to have a bracket hold down welded on the log forwarder that retains 8 hydraulic lines on top of the boom. Had to stick weld it as there was no way to get the MIG on top of the machine even with a 25 fifty amp extension cord.
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You can help control the heat by stopping intermittently on long seams. What's especially nice about your equipment is mig welds have way more penetration than tig making them a lot stronger. I've cross sectioned both on steel and tig had surprisingly minimal penetration, even though it appeared to be deep during the welding process. the thicker the material, the worse, since there is so much more heat sink to suck away the energy. Providing there's enough material thickness, mig over tig every time. (y)
 
Discussion starter · #29 ·
So I re positioned the hinge on my fold up trailer step. It needed to be down further but never had anything to weld aluminum. I had shimmed it with large washers but now I don't have to.

Starting to get the hang of it.


Before, hinge is higher than the flatbar
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After, top of hinge is equal to flatbar.

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