hititfaster Posted April 20, 2005 Report Share Posted April 20, 2005 If I had a pound for every person on here who has snapped a frame and then asked the next obvious question with the word 'weld' somewhere in it, I'd be able to buy myself a new frame :( While I was doing some research for uni work just now, I found this site here. It's jammed full of useful information about welding with aluminium, but for those with a sub-goldfish attention span, I'm gonna be real nice to you and give you the gist of it: (if there's any holes in this, feel free to slap me and point them out... it is like 2.15am!) That thaaare is a table of types of aluminium and some of their basic properties. Now, basic alu in its raw form is pants, so they chuck in extra stuff to make it perform better in certain applications. As you can see, the range of blends starts at 1xxx (let's call it 1000 - you'll see why in a minute) and goes to 8000 (maybe further, I don't know, or for this cause, care (Y) ) The different additives they put into the blend also change the way the material behaves when heated during welding and heat treatment, and the numbers following the first number denote what the blend is... Soooo... the main blends you will be concerned with are 6000 and 7000, as these are generally the ones used in frame construction. Anything like 6061, 7005, or other blends beginning 6/7 fall into those categories, and if you look at the chart, are heat treatable, which means that to get the best from the material, it should be heat treated, which you frame will have been when it was made. If your frame is made of either of these blends and you snap and have it re-welded, the heat generated during the welding process will alter the state of the material again, meaning that it will not be at its former best, probably meaning snappypoos will follow shortly. Anyways, I hope this little explanation clears the fog of confusion that seems to surround welding alu. It might be of some use/help/interest to somebody out there. If nothing else it might help someone with a design project... it did me :D Tom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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