welded aluminum wire "flying squirrel"

[jakeru]

My daughter is into flying squirrels at the moment, so I made her one. I bent it out of 1/8" 5356 aluminum filler rod. (It was kind of inspired by one of those metal frame arts and craft projects for kids that come with plastic pellets that you put inside the frame, set on aluminum foil, and bake it until the plastic melts.)



I used 1/16" 5356 filler rod to weld it, also using pure argon, 50% EP AC Balance, 10 amps @ pedal full down (I actually intended to dial in about 25 at full pedal down, but checked where it was actually at after I was done welding, and found it was only at 10 amps full down), and a pretty sharp, 1/16" tungsten.

Picture of the tungsten after welding:


The arc was often not that stable. Probably would have gone better if I dialed in a bit more current at pedal down. It usually would start after an initial brief "sputter", lift pedal, and retry and it would work.

The "third hand" came in really handy for keeping the 1/8" wire 'work' held down (and grounded) while welding it. (Although, I could have used a smaller one, because it was actually getting in the way of my torch quite often.)

This is the same basic setup that I use to weld my thick stuff, (like the 1/2" thick outboard motor skeg repair) except all I change is, I grind the tungsten much more bluntly, increase the peak current (e.g., down on the pedal knob), decrease the AC Balance down to about 20% EP (the minimum my machine allows), and mix in a small % of Helium.