I need someone that is a welder in the know, not someone with a welder in ther garage or that knows how to weld. I need to know if a regular mig unit can be converted to mig aluminum. Can you change the gas and wire or is there more to it.

Tom- I dont know if this helps or not but I was going to do some welding on an intake so I checked on what it would take. I was told by the welding supply shop that you could do it with aluminum wire and 100 percent Argon gas instead of the argon/Co2 mix for steel welding. I never did it because I found a guy to TIG weld the intake for less than the costs of the stuff for my welder.

im pretty sure www.eastwood.com sells a kit for their lincoln welders.

Tom,

In order to change to aluminum, you have to change your liner in the gun. You need a teflon liner. Everything else should be OK. As Cooter said, you need 100% argon as a shielding gas. Now this is for aluminum plate. If you are doing aluminum casting, I would not recommend the mig process. A casting has entrapped gas which could contaminate the weld. E-mail me with the base alloy and if it is sheet or casting, and I will help you with the process. E-mail at work is BWilburn@fmmafco.com

Some of it will also depend on exactly what welder you have. If you can't get the parts you can't convert it. If it's a lincoln I'd call them. They can tell you exactly what part(s) you need.

The wire welders usually want certain wire sizes. AL wire tends to be pretty thick. you have to make sure the drive rollers and feed tube can pass it properly.

When you change gases you may also need to change the regulator. At the least you'll likely need to change the fitting. Diferant gasses often have diferant fittings and may require diferant regulators because of diferances in cylinder pressure and the fact some gasses don't like the materials some regulators are made from.

thanks for all the info. I will look into getting the stuff together. I thought helium was the gas for aluminum. It will all be plate and extrusions. Nothing cast.