The only aluminum brazing I ever did was joining pieces of diamond plate for floors in shipping trailers. Thats a good tip about tinning the surfaces, makes sense. I never was very good at aluminum brazing, I got just good enough to call the job done but never really satisfied with it.
I know stick, or electrode or whatever it is called. It isn’t that hard, I learned it in a couple of hours. I learned a method where you have to have the piece on a direct ground. You then apply your positive electrode, ceramic coated steel, onto the seam. Apply the joint in wave shapes, much like the representations of waves used in acoustic models, only back and forth in a continuous line. If the stick gets stuck, unclamp it and break it off, then re-apply. Do not keep a connection while breaking it off and never lift it off the ground without isolation if it gets stuck, as you’ll get a big caramel! I reccomend to keep it clamped to a steel table, if it isn’t too big. If it’s to big, just connect it directly with some metal if it’s not grounded all ready.
Always wear eye-protection! You don’t want to get blind! Steel is pretty interesting, are there any harmful gasses released during welding, or basically, melting steel? I would think there is. I wasn’t the most interested in biology in my youth… I know lots of procedures are taken when using different metals in ceramics and in chemistry, but I really don’t know enough.
Okay, you’ll get these welders without a license and they’re easy to operate, as long as you take care about safety and use it in a proper locale. Ventillation, access to fire extinguishers for both fire and electrical fire, etc. is reccomended I think, but I don’t remember. We used it in a shop of misfortune, where we melted steel in microwaves, among other dangerous things, so we had everything preventative we could get. We even had spacecraft silica wool. The teacher who ran the shop had moved onto metalurgy and art after being a anarchistic, super-socialistic bio-chemist for decades, so he had some tricks up his sleeve on how to do things on a budget.
I’ve used the aluminum brazing rods to build so radio antennas. Worked well for the director elements.
And don’t try to weld cadmium plated or galvanized with out good ventilation. Maybe not cat, all.
By the way: Sounds like a nice initiative, make things better! thumbs up.
Never weld zinc plated or galvanized steel. You’ll get zinc poisoning and wish you were dead. You want to work with weldable steel if you can, it’s a relatively mild steel that won’t be plated. If you’re repairing something just make sure to get any plating off. For zinc you can use muriatic acid. Use it outdoors, it will produce hydrogen.
ETA: Just don’t breathe any fumes from welding.
Yeah, you get pretty strange from one evening of soldering, even…
Why can’t I weld cats? That’s really where I was heading with this project. Dogs then?
It’s always good to avoid breathing any kind of smoke. When I weld inside, I have a box fan set on low, blowing the smoke away. Always open up the doors, I do so on opposite sides of my building, and it creates a nice little draft that takes the smoke away from me sometimes without needing any fan. Outside, nature tends to take care of it for you.
Welding galvanized steel (and zinc) does create a poisonous gas, and there are various precautions that you’ll want to take for it. You don’t necessarily need a high dollar vacuum machine to capture the gas, there are some simple things you can do that will work just fine especially if it’s just going to be short runs.
Regardless of what you choose, you’ll get used to either one fairly quick. Many seem happy with MIG these days, and I imagine if I had started out on that instead of stick, I would have been just as content. But since I started with stick, it is the method I’m mostly comfortable with. I wouldn’t let not getting a spark be that much of a determining factor. Typical reasons people cannot get a spark from stick, tend to be the most basic. Not grinding a good place for your ground to go. Not grinding the primer or any other area where you’re going to weld. And one common mistake is poking the stick, instead of striking it like a match. On high humidity days it probably wouldn’t hurt to dry out your welding rods by putting them in your oven for about 30 minutes or so at a very low temperature setting. Double check your setting, make sure it has enough amps on your welder. Using the right rods that are dry, again, it’s hard to go wrong with 6011. And start with a fresh rod. Sometimes you can run into problems on getting a rod to restart after having it run just fine when you first started. This generally happens to me while outside on windier days, it has happened inside too, but not near as much, and not enough to be a real problem.
I think the wiring will be safe as long as you do as you say, and use the correct gauge wire. Going with 110 though, is going to limit what you can do with a welder. Do you have any idea what you are planning on welding? You can probably forget welding any kind of heavy duty pipe with just 110. If you plan on making any smokers, you’re going to need more amps to weld ¼” steel. Doubt the 110 models would be having enough amps to give you decent welds with that kind of thickness.
I did something similar. My first welder was Lincoln 220 AC/DC, non-gasoline. I had an outside breaker box that I wired a 100’ (4 gauge, I think) run of wire into my a temporary junction box. Just did this on top of the ground. Later when I got my building up, I buried the same wire under ground.
I also gave my stinger extra longer leads too like another had done on his welder. For the ground, I think I left it the same length, since you can take any long piece of metal you have lying around, and extend that out to the area you’ll be welding to, and make a ground with it.
For my gasoline powered stick welder, I went with just a basic Lincoln AC that only goes up to 125 amps. It’s limited what it can do, but perfect for what I needed it for. Used it for metal buildings, welding 14 ga c-purlin, and some 11 ga square tubing mostly. Sixteen years later, hundreds of hours put on it, she still runs great.
Before I forget, somebody above mentioned duty cycles. This is important. Most commercial outfits will generally have higher duty cycles on their welders. You can’t run most welders continuously at full capacity, to do so, would cause them to prematurely burn up. The higher the number the better. Most hobbyists are probably going to have their welder in the 20-40 duty cycle range. This may not sound like a lot, but you’ll be surprised how much time you’re actually welding, compared to setting up, getting the welds ready, changing out your stick (if you go that route), moving stuff around, etc. Also, I think that most welder manufacturers (maybe not all though, not sure) rate the duty cycle for the highest output. If you had a 225 amp welder with a 30 duty cycle, you could weld for 3 minutes, while having to rest it for 7 minutes at that setting. But that same welder, if you were only using 70 amps, it wouldn’t surprise me if you had a 100% duty cycle are close to it at that setting. I don’t believe most welding manufacturers bother to make the equipment to where it automatically shuts off, it’s something you have to judge for yourself. Seems like they would, or maybe these days some have started doing this. My welders are a bit old.
Darn autocorrect! Sometimes more trouble than it’s worth.