Before Tig Welding any joint, do this for 5 seconds.

How can such a small and simple thing make SUCH a huge impact with your work…? Something that literally takes 5 extra seconds to do, and it will show you what kind of trouble lies ahead, and give you a great opportunity to take care of any problems I can bite you later down the line.

What's the first thing you do when you go to work on a project? You assemble it with a tacking procedure. Typically this is done quickly and in most cases haphazardly, but this is a huge missed opportunity that a lot of welders can capitalize on. Typically most pieces are assembled with a talking procedure that looks something like this👇

This will have somewhat adequate heat, and a decent amount of filler, however there is one problem that typically will occur with something like this - It will break. With welding aluminum joints one of the most common problems that people have to deal with is distortion. Projects will flex, warp and shift even with the smallest amount of welding happening, and when something small like this little fella is put under any pressure, cracking is inevitable. This can cause your joint to shift, pop open, or lose the careful alignment that you have used to put your joint together with. 

Here is what I teach and recommend instead👇

You can see that this tack has been performed in two steps, instead of one dab. This will have a drastically improved strength tolerance, this will be able to withstand distortion much better to some degree, and I think that you will find that this will crack much less frequently, and this will help to keep your joint in alignment exactly the way you want it to be.

It will also do something really interesting as well. After completing this two step tack you will stop and take a look at what happens as far as distortion. After taking this small extra step you will be able to look at and correct any distortion that has occurred before actually starting your full complete pass, this will make your job much easier to correct any distortion after the complete welding procedure is finished with whatever project you are doing.

This is one of the most important small details that I ever learned in welding production. This literally takes a few extra seconds to complete, and the payoff is massive. You can see exactly what is going to happen as far as distortion, as well as being more resilient and preventing things from shifting when a tack breaks.

For a complete demonstration of this tactic as well as other tricks it can help you with, you can watch this episode right here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYOzSqy4YV8

This will go over settings that I use to do this, as well as different scenarios that this will help you, if you haven't seen this episode it's definitely a really important one! Go enjoy!

I hope all of you are doing well, it's a pleasure to be able to make these videos for you all. Happy welding.

Dusty