everybody it's matt from eastwood company and welcome to another technical
video today we're going to be talking about TIG welding sheet metal
probably the biggest thing that people do at least an automotive hobby when you
get a MIG welder you want to fix some Ross want to do some sheet metal welding
unfortunately it's probably one of the most difficult things to do we see a lot
of guys struggling with blowing through panels and getting some in proper
repairs done on their cars that are structural structurally sound
so I want to give you some tips and tricks show you what it's supposed to
look like and maybe give you some idea of some cool products that are going to
help you get your welds and your repair is looking a lot better so let's dive
right in
so with sheet metal welding there is two wires that i would suggest to use the I
would not suggest to use flux core well welding or wire when doing sheet metal
work
I know some some people do it they get by but it is not good on inherently flux
core wires sticker just because of the flux it's around it
it generally takes a little more heat melt the wire because it is sticker
which puts more heat to the panel and causes issues obviously it causes more
warping was it more grinding don't should suggest doing that
I definitely just first of all using make welding with a shielding gas the
wire and 0 to 3 wire is probably if you're doing thin-gauge steel like like
a 20 gauge or 18 gauge you're going to be pretty good with 0 to 3 wire you can
get away with using o3o wire it just have to change your settings a little
bit but it can be used
the nice thing about the o3o wire is that you can then use it on a little bit
heavier of stuff 16 gauge 8-inch you know in some heavier fabrication
so it's a little more versatile that's what i have in the machine today is 0300
wire because we use this machine for everything from doing sheet metal
welding all the way up to some medium duty fabrication
we're also using the big 175 today again because it's so versatile
it's 220 only but you can use it on sheet metal all the way up to some
heavier fabrication
we do offer over here to additional machines that we have we have to make
250 which is a much larger unit for heavier fabrication but again it could
do sheet metal no problem you can dial it down or the 135 is a good little
workhorse it's a 110 voltage machine and you plug right into a normal house
outlet you can do the medium-duty fabrication with this but it's also
great for sheet metal welding
I keep it a 135 on my cart would just go to three wire rent it for when i'm doing
sheet metal repairs and it's great to roll around and use it for that
so that's a breakdown of the machines the key with welding with with sheet
metal is that you want to be hot and fast you want to be in and out of the
panel as quick as you can be so a mistake i oftentimes see is that a the
beginners
yeah they turn the Machine down to low the the actual heat coming out of the
torch or your weld is too cold they think by turning the Machine down it's
keeping the panel core
you're not really getting the penetration that you need it takes more
time to create that puddle which in the end you're putting more heat into it so
I like to turn the Machine up a bit higher since i'm a little more
experience that I like to turn the Machine up almost to the border of
blowing through but I got it to the point where you can you can hit the
trigger and get in and out real quick
and you're not causing any issues the other thing
ideally you want to get a hundred percent penetration between the two
panels that you're welding together
I have one here and i'll show you guys that we're going to do a little bit of
welding later on in the video we'll see if Joe can get a shot of it but this is
the back side of this piece here and you can see that on this one here
actually all of them but fish on this one here there's a hundred percent
penetration
so with that we know there are well is going is connecting both of the pieces
and he's going all the way through that the two panels that were there were
welding together because of that you can then blend the top edge you can grind
sand and smooth everything out and you're going to get a nice solid repair
because it's all the way through the panel it's not just sitting on the top
floating there and when you grind it it's just going to break her for a
fracture
so you want to be hot and you want to be quick when you're doing you're welding
you want to be in and out as fast as you can be to get the heat in there and get
the heat out
the other thing is when you're setting the Machine up
it's good to get a test piece of the same thickness that you're welding
so before we started this video I got some so test piece is a 20 gauge and I
kind of played with the machine to make sure i had my optimum settings
you definitely definitely want to do that for you doing a project on your car
even though I i I've welded 20 gauge sheet metal countless times i still like
to do it ahead of time just so you know where you wear your settings are going
to be going to be
you never know every machines a little bit different every piece of metal metal
is a little bit different
especially on an old car we got ruston and you know maybe some older metal
that's a little thinner
from sanding or things like that so that's the basic idea what we're doing
today I'm going to show you the two ways to set up a sheet metal repair a gap to
set up your gap when you're welding with mig welding just kind of two schools of
thought the first school of thought is if you have two panels like this you
leave a little gap in between so you can see that there's a small gap in between
two of these
so this is one school of thought that does work and works well if you get
everything set up right
these cool cool little clamps we have here these are a little paddle clamps
these guys have a little a little bar here it comes out and has a little thumb
screw on the top that you can tighten the wing nut rather and this is what it
looks like all mocked up so you can see on the bottom here when you put this bar
on the underside when you tighten that the wing nut up from the top
it pulls everything together makes the paddle flush but also this little piece
here in between sets your gap
so if it gives you a little bit of distance between there to set the gap
when you're welding a piece together this is great for creating a consistent
gap throughout the whole entire panel that you're repairing these little these
little guys are pretty cheap and affordable
i usually get a couple bags with Rome in my arm and my box and keep them around
so that you can you can do a smaller pair of large repair if you're if you're
doing a wedding in this matter
so the idea with welding with a gap like this is that again we're talking about a
hundred percent penetration or by leaving that gap there to give a space
for the wire to kind of go through and fill up a gap so that you can actually
bridge that gap there and get a hundred percent penetration
it does work and a lot of guys prefer to do the repairs this way
the only downside i would say to this is because of that gap
you can
very difficult to fill across that with this thing of sheet metal and we're
going to show you in a moment what I technique that i do to try and to try
and help with that but it is difficult if you get it not right or your heats
not quite right
you're going to probably burn a hole through here you're going to create a
bigger hole and then you're going to fill that hole back step and everything
just to fill it in so it can create a mess
if you don't have everything just right so that is one problem so what I'm going
to do is I'm going to set up the machine here and we'll do a couple stitches
welds on this and show you what it looks like after I do a couple zaps here and
we're going to do it just straight up like like it is and we'll go from there
so make sure you read all my settings down ahead of time just so we didn't we
weren't fooling around with the machine
so
right about there good we'll make sure that are gases on using a CO - 7525
argon co2 blend pretty standard and grab it set of gloves here of course you
don't want to burn our hands
all right so then I machine setup one thing to mention is some mistake that I
see
beginners make is they leave too far of a stick out on the coming out of the out
of the tip of the nozzle here if you have a real long stick out
you know maybe something like that where you hold your hands too far away
it's going to actually you're going to lose some power
by the time that you actually get it this gets to the to the piece can also
lose shielding gas so I i suggest using a set of these pliers a little trick
that i do that i use these pliers here I'll run a little bit out so you can see
i use these little make flyers like we sell and I used it the the cutter side
as a depth to set my set my depth here hopes will flip it around
set your depth and cut your piece off and that kind of gets you close every
time you want a little bit closer of a cut you can turn it the other way
that's usually how I do that really handy these have pliers on them
if cutters on this kind of handles everything on one tool for for using
with your big water I keep one in the car and I keep usually one under the
flap on the on the machine so i have my my ground clamp on the table here
this is a nice clean of bare metal welding table so we can create great to
the table
we don't have to worry about getting the clamp in and in the way if you don't
have a queen piece you need to clamp right on the repair area or close to it
they're working on a car you may need to sand some paint or some some primer
whatever off of the panel and clamp as close as you can to it you get a good
ground
that's very important as well you're not going to get a good well if you have
your ground all the way across the the vehicle or if it's it's clamped on an
area that's not clear
bare metal so together we got our ground clamped on there
we're going to set this piece up here and we're going to do we're going to do
a weld real quick so you can get this to go
with a gap here
see that's what happens
and and the reason i don't really like the gap portion or at least without
using something to help you can see when you set your well there it blows right
through
it's not really a great experience and now you gotta now you gotta fill that
hole
so what you really need to do you need something to back that up
now I can I can quit doing well here and and blend that in and it will be just
fine but it's going to be more heat into the paddle to save yourself the hassle
what I like to do if I'm you if I have to well with a gap like that or if I
have to fill the gap with a MIG welder is you can use these copper backers
we sell a kit as a little handle with a bunch of different sizes or a bunch of
different shapes at least
and we also have these flat ones that have some little magnets on for this
instance a flat one would be great
I'm just going to put the flat one behind here and since we got our clamps
on here i got to set something underneath but i'm going to use that to
back up my weld
let's see what it does with the copper back or attached and see if it's a
little easier now I'm going to take this off here
ok
sounded a lot better right so that's that's the difference between welding
that's the one without the backer just blew right through and again I i could
probably finagle it and get the thing - well you know - get it - well without
the background there but it's it's pretty tricky it takes it takes just the
right hand movement to get it out to get it set right versus using the copper
backer room i put it on there and I just did a quick weld
now one thing you may have noticed i don't know if it was easy to see when I
did it
what I do is what I do welding like this
I like to the matter how you do it
i usually will kind of sit I'll kind of sit the edge of the nozzle down on the
piece like that so i can get a visual kind of visually see where I'm where I'm
welding and then i just read right when I'm about the world
I lift my hand up off of the peace and hit the trigger well my torch is still
turned like that and it as i said as soon as I see that puddle form i turn my
wrist up like this over to the other way or straight up and down
what that does is your your kind of working that the puddle from one side
over to the other and it really helps kind of just fill the paddle out get a
nice flat weld
so that's one trick that you can do or if you're trying to fill a hole like
that you can kind of do the same thing we can't favor one side and then and
then quickly move it over
you will also notice up the trigger really quick there wasn't a long well it
was just zapped in and out
done if you got the machine set correctly it will be nice and hot you'll
be in and out and we don't have a excessive heat into the work piece here
now the one thing you will see on the back side here if you look this is the
back so we got a hundred percent penetration is completely filled up that
that I that gap there
that's what you want now you got a hundred percent penetration
when you stay in the top of this smooth you're going to have still have
something bridging the gap there and still going to be nice and strong
so that's without or with the gap
that's one way to do it you just got to make sure you set your gap like that and
again i would highly suggest one of these copper backers
the other way is to do it if we showed in the beginning on the peace with no
gap whatsoever
so this piece here I but it together tightly i put some tack welds on it just
to hold it together so we can we can eat easily show you how it's gonna go well
with this way again nothing wrong with this
it's just that you need to set the Machine up so that it's a little hotter
because you're actually you're melting between the two pieces to join them
together then you're almost there almost melting that center area way
so with that we're going to crank the Machine up a little bit so we're going
to crack it up basically a whole entire setting and one wire speed
I'm put some sort
yeah