How to TIG weld aluminum beverage cans together

I show how to weld aluminum cans together with a cheap import TIG welder. I am not a professional welder, so some of my advice may be unconventional or even wrong, but these methods work well for me. With a 3/32" electrode and large gas lens, I don't have to change the torch setup for nearly any kind of common welding. Let me know if you have any questions or would like me to make more welding videos.

Some things that I have learned:

Don't use pure tungsten electrodes. The new rare-earth blends work very well on nearly all metals.

Sharpen the electrode to a very fine point for low-current welding, and sharpen it like a pencil for higher (eg over 100A) welding.

Keep the electrode balance control electrode negative ("weld") and only shift toward electrode positive ("clean") when absolutely necessary.

The welder's pulse feature turned out to be not as useful as I originally thought. It just seems to complicate things. It's definitely possible to make great welds without it.

Use fat electrodes. Some people claim that using an electrode that is "too large" for the weld current will cause the arc to wander. Nope. Just grind it to a sharp point. Thin electrodes 1/16" and .040" overheat much too easily, and provide no apparent benefit. .040" electrodes are very frustrating.

Use thin filler rod. It's much easier to feed thin rod quickly than feed fat rod slowly. As I mentioned in the video, it's easier to sneak a thin filler rod into the puddle while keeping the torch close to the surface.

Cooking with thermite

I ignited four pounds of thermite made with aluminum / iron (III) oxide in a flower pot. The thermite reaction quickly formed liquid iron which dripped down out of the pot, and into a ceramic pan. I put a beef kebab directly onto the liquid iron, which cooked the food in under a minute. It was delicious!

Aluminum welding progress

I ordered a bunch of aluminum parts from eBay and McMaster. I've spent a few afternoons just cutting the metal into random parts and TIG welding it back together


I've made a few coupons to test the five basic weld types:

* Butt
* T-joint
* Open corner
* Lap joint
* Edge

The above picture only shows a T-joint and open corner, since those are my best types.



This pipe doesn't do anything useful, unfortunately. I just made random cuts on my miter saw, rotated the two pieces 180*, then welded them.


I'm still working on getting nice, consistent beads, but they have good penetration, and I'm getting a lot more confident with aluminum.

Aluminum welding progress: T-joint

I ordered a bunch of aluminum bars and cut them into 6" pieces to practice basic welding joints. It's going pretty well. Here's a list of quick tips that I have learned:

1/16" electrods seem good enough to handle almost any task at 150A or less. I'm not yet sure why anyone would use anything bigger or smaller for less than 150A.

The filler rod must be forcibly pushed into the puddle, then quickly retracted. It cannot be brought near the arc slowly, as it will melt before it gets to the puddle! I have found that I move the torch in the direction of the weld to get the base metal molten, then move it backwards slightly while I add filler, then move forwards again. I use this one-step-back, two-steps-forward approach for the entire weld.

The AC balance control can be pretty heavily shifted to DC EN. I usually keep mine at %70 to %80.

It helps to have the part propped up off the table. For the first T-joint that I welded, I had the plat laying flat on my metal table. This makes the angle of the torch more difficult, but worse, it sucks a lot of heat out of the aluminum that is touching the table. This is really a pain, because it makes the weld asymmetric in terms of heat required, and finding the magic torch angle to melt both sides evenly becomes more difficult.

TIG welding aluminum cans together

Take a look at this:

I've always been impressed by people who could weld soda cans together, and so I gave it a shot today. It's actually easier than I thought. The cans act as great heat sinks, and the bottom of the can is a rolled "edge" (ie it would be MUCH more difficult to cut a can in half, then butt-weld the paper-thin aluminum edges together). Of course, my weld is not really pretty, and I did blow through the material on the other side of the can... This exercise reminded me how much I need to work on holding the torch at 90* to the surface when going around a cylinder.