How To Weld Sheet Metal Without Distortion

Short bursts or tacks will help you gain more control and adjust easily.

How to weld sheet metal without distortion. Welding heat sink applying a heat sink behind the weld or on the surrounding metal of a weld will help keep the the heat from spreading and allows you to weld without damaging the metal surrounding the weld as much. Correctly sizing a weld not only minimizes distortion but also saves weld metal and time. While wire feed welding sheet metal go for short bursts of welding instead of a going on a long bead. To weld sheet metal with solid wires use electrode positive ep or reverse polarity.

Tig welding sheet metal. Minimize the amount of heat put into the weld. Try going for a wire of 023 inches when welding sheet metal. It might be tough to completely eliminate distortion on something that size.

Because shrinkage accumulates from each weld pass a fewer number of big passes results in less distortion than a greater number of small passes with small electrodes. For sheet metal i use ine welding wire and it is just as good as their flux cored wire if you want you can grab one here. It s important to avoid overwelding. Don t attempt to weld thin materials like sheet metal with flux cored wires which put more heat into the base metal.

Start out with lots of tacks and then backstep weld about 1 1 2 at a time. Use intermittent welds instead of continuous welds where possible to minimize the amount of weld metal. You can learn how to use them in proper use of weld gages. Another way to minimize weld metal is to use intermittent rather than continuous welds where possible as in fig.

Welding stiffeners to plate is a great place to do this. The bigger the weld the greater the shrinkage. When butt welding chamfer both sides of the join but keep the included angle less than 60 and make the gap between the sheets as small as possible. Ensuring that the weld has been correctly sized will minimize distortion and save weld metal and time.

If necessary invest in weld gages. Intermittent rather than continuous welds help as does minimizing the amount of filler metal used. Here are some tips to minimize welding distortion. The bigger the weld the greater the shrinkage that will occur.

If distortion is a problem select either a joint in which the weld stresses balance each other or a joint requiring the least amount of weld metal.