Stainless steel welding with a MIG?

[Dualist]

High heat, low feed as you need to spray transfer the filler wire, also a high helium tri-mix gas will help with heat transfer.
Easy to get cold lap or zero penetration with a home mig but still doable, if you can get your hands on a synoptic mig and it'll be sweet, wire is bloody expensive too.

[flyerncle]

Glue the bugger ?

[voucht]

Thank you guys. That is lot of very good informations and tips you gave there.

I've been thinking about it all the past week. Now, I have cut my stainless steel elbows and tubes and they are ready to be assembled. But when I see the price of the stainless steel welding wire, I'm wondering if it worth spending this money without being sure of the result and its quality.

So I'm going to talk to the welder I know next week, and see how much he would charge. After all, it is only 3 junctions to be welded.

Thank a lot.

[TheArf]

Tig weld it and use pure argon, and if you can rig a second outlet from your Argon supply, tape off one end of the pipe and push trough some small holes, then put your second Argon supply in from the other end and seal it inside either with masking tape on manufacture a bug that allows you to feed argon inside to purge the air out of the weld area. This greatly improves the quality of the weld.

Arfon

[baz-r]

for mig welding stainless steels you really need argon or argon/oxygen (max 2%oxy) for 1-6mm
helium/argon/co2 blend for very thin to 3mm
argon/co2(2.5%) is ok for 3-11mm

i worked for a welding and ind gas supplyer

[voucht]

Thanks Arfon and Baz for the inputs. I think this thread can be useful to forum members in the future with all these very good infos.

I finally cut my stainless tubes and bring them to a professional welder I know with my motorbike muffler. He did a very fine job in one day, for only £30, which is much cheaper than a stainless wire roll (and a new gas mix!)
Here is the result, and I'm very happy with it.


2013-12-03_10-50-07 par Voucht71, sur Flickr


2013-12-04_14-02-04 par Voucht71, sur Flickr


2013-12-04_14-38-14 par Voucht71, sur Flickr

More pictures and a follow up about the muffler mounting at the end of this thread:
http://www.haynes.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=12974

Thanks a lot to all of you for your help

[TheArf]

Hellfire Sylvain what is that a muffler for an A380 its' chuffin huge.
Going back to the gas mixes, no I didn't sell it, I just used it on chemical pipework, and my other half has a food mixer but it doesn't make her a baker.

hey ho

Arfon

[voucht]

It IS huge !

Well, it has an integrated cat converter, so that also explains why. And I'm so glad I didn't have to insert one of these ugly cat converter in the exhaust line!

I'm curious to see how it will look on the finished car which will, if I succeed, have a mixed retro and modern look, so it could be actually pretty cool

Thanks.