Aluminum Mig Welding

[MontaukV]

I have been welding aluminum for about 8 years, recently I came across a process that I believed to be ridicuous on aluminum. I was working as a supervisor at an aluminum shipyard and one of the old-school supervisors said, " Let's try and cermaic tape weld these seam " I was like, thats not going to work. I told hm that it would leave too much trash in the weld from the ceramic. Well, we did it and it took 3 times as long to weld because we had to keep cutting out the trash. We managed to pass all UT and RT on the seams. Basically he was trying to use steel process on aluminum. That was first time I had heard of anyone trying to ceramic tape weld aluminum. Yesterday, I went to take a welding test for a new company and they wanted me to ceramic tape weld aluminum also, and I am like what the hell is going on. Please give me your feedback on this ceramic tape welding on aluminum process because I think it is absurd...

[kburd]

never even heard of it but i will bump ya want to see an answer

[Rojodiablo]

Say whaaat?? I will bump this too.

[Boostinjdm]

Maybe the guys at the new company were trying to weed out the idiots?

[DesertRider33]

Are you talking about using a ceramic backing strip behind a gapped groove joint? That is common in shipyards on steel. Never heard of it on aluminum. As long as it doesn't contaminate the root, I don't see why it wouldn't work.

[kburd]

anybody else weigh in on this?