Hey,
Here's my first attempt at TIG welding a cracked/broken aluminium casting. It was for a friend of mine whos a mechanic, his assistant dropped a gearbox while trying to pack it up to ship out, it still had this bell housing on it and you can see where it landed
He asked if I could try and fix it for him otherwise he was on the hook for a new one and the time it takes to get here. It's turned out at least useable until a replacement can be found for hopefully less than the OEM cost. Once we ground the mating surface down it's gone back together into the car and working fine, as it doesn't hold any fluids and there's plenty of additional strength it probably would have held together ok but I like to think I've improved it from where it started ;p.
I'm guessing it's the case with most cast Al but I ended up having to swap tungsten's about 10 times during this repair as it kept spitting etc. I was using 4043 filler, I have 1100 and 5356 but I don't think either of those would have improved the spitting from the cast metal. I had drilled and V'd the cracks, and wire wheeled as best I could to clean it. I did soak it in break cleaner and burn it out with OA then preheat, the soot up the top was to try and get a better reading from my cheap IR thermometer as it was very inconsistent reading temps, I do have some temp sticks/crayons but I of course couldn't find them.
I think it went OK for my first attempt at cast AL, it's not cleaned in the second shot as yet, so the welds are dirty not porous as they kind of look. Any one have any tips of feed back for improving, also any tips on helping with the spitting and foaling of the tungsten would be great to. Thanks everyone.
Here's my first attempt at TIG welding a cracked/broken aluminium casting. It was for a friend of mine whos a mechanic, his assistant dropped a gearbox while trying to pack it up to ship out, it still had this bell housing on it and you can see where it landed
He asked if I could try and fix it for him otherwise he was on the hook for a new one and the time it takes to get here. It's turned out at least useable until a replacement can be found for hopefully less than the OEM cost. Once we ground the mating surface down it's gone back together into the car and working fine, as it doesn't hold any fluids and there's plenty of additional strength it probably would have held together ok but I like to think I've improved it from where it started ;p.I'm guessing it's the case with most cast Al but I ended up having to swap tungsten's about 10 times during this repair as it kept spitting etc. I was using 4043 filler, I have 1100 and 5356 but I don't think either of those would have improved the spitting from the cast metal. I had drilled and V'd the cracks, and wire wheeled as best I could to clean it. I did soak it in break cleaner and burn it out with OA then preheat, the soot up the top was to try and get a better reading from my cheap IR thermometer as it was very inconsistent reading temps, I do have some temp sticks/crayons but I of course couldn't find them.
I think it went OK for my first attempt at cast AL, it's not cleaned in the second shot as yet, so the welds are dirty not porous as they kind of look. Any one have any tips of feed back for improving, also any tips on helping with the spitting and foaling of the tungsten would be great to. Thanks everyone.
