Welding Stainless with MIG?

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JimWard

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I have become reasonably proficient using my MIG welder on mild steel using the flux wire filler. And i always assumed that welding a stainless fitting to one of my precious stainless pots was not possible with my MIG setup. I figured it needed to be TIG and you needed to be really good with it (experienced).

Anyhow, I recently noticed that Stainless is available in the 2 lb spools and that they even make stainless with flux in it - presumably so no shielding gas is required. My MIG welder does have gas capability so I can do the shielding gas if needed. And i have plenty of CO2 as well...

Obviously I will need to get some scrap stainless to practice on.

So the big question to you welding experts; Is it possible to get good results welding stainless with MIG equipment?

Thanks! It is now brew thirty and time for a beer:mug:
 
I would definitely get some gas for it. It won't look as good as TIG but it will work.
 
the cost of the spool is about $20 for a 2lb, you can hae the fittings tigged for close to the same price, but it looks like you would have to buy a bottle and regulator as ell so having a shop tifg them would be much cheaper and better quality
 
I used a mig welder on all my keggles, and they turned out ok. I used solid wire and shielding gas. I didn't use any back gas, so the inside looks crappy and rusted a little to begin with, but it is fine now and since none of this is in contact with cool wort I didn't worry about bad surfaces inside. If you want the inside to be good, you need to back gas the weld area. It took a while to get the welder settings right because they were very different from what I would use on mild steel of the same size, so practice a bunch first on scrap.
 
The best gas for stainless is a tri-mix, but costs more.

A more economical gas is O-1(99%Argon1%Oxygen)

Helium increases the heat input which may not be a good idea on sheetmetal.

Helium is normally used for welding thick sections, and increased travels speeds
 
thanks guys - sounds like a challenge. Nice reality check. still need to get some scrap and see how bad it can be. jim
 
JimWard said:
I have become reasonably proficient using my MIG welder on mild steel using the flux wire filler. And i always assumed that welding a stainless fitting to one of my precious stainless pots was not possible with my MIG setup. I figured it needed to be TIG and you needed to be really good with it (experienced).

Anyhow, I recently noticed that Stainless is available in the 2 lb spools and that they even make stainless with flux in it - presumably so no shielding gas is required. My MIG welder does have gas capability so I can do the shielding gas if needed. And i have plenty of CO2 as well...

Obviously I will need to get some scrap stainless to practice on.

So the big question to you welding experts; Is it possible to get good results welding stainless with MIG equipment?

Thanks! It is now brew thirty and time for a beer:mug:
Click to expand...


go with gas and use tri mix it is 90% Heilium 7.5% Argon and 2.5 C02and it works pretty well I have done stainless mig welding many moons ago.
 
As others have said, don't use the co2 for the shielding gas.

One thing you can do is to make a dimpling tool that I posted a while back. There are some great recreations of it in the soldering ss thread in the sticky section. Basically what it will do for you is....make the weld in mig much raiser. Your only real worries will be your starts and stops leaking. Its a bit more difficult tieing in with the mig process. You may need to go back and fill in a pin hole or two but that should be easy enough given the usage of the end product here.

I would post up pics of my tool but im on my phone right now. Sorry.
 

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