Mig Welding Stainless Steel Pipe

Mode of metal transfer.

Mig welding stainless steel pipe.

Tig welding is traditionally used for welding stainless steel tube and pipe and remains the optimal solution for extremely high purity applications on tube or pipe at or below 6 inch diameter and schedule 10 wall thickness. In this short video a new technology is being used. I have been a tig welder for years in the dairy and bakery industries stainless will crack if its not welded properly. But if your car has a stainless steel exhaust pipe then you better use small spool for stainless steel wire and use regular mig welder machine and this is how to mig weld stainless steel exhaust pipe.

The magnet stuck to the mig weld strongly letting me know for sure that the weld was carbon steel. Mig may be ok but tig would be better and be sure to get 100 penetration. Alternative gases that you can use are 98 argon and 2 co2 or 98 argon and 2 oxygen mix. The preferred method for high purity food grade stainless steel is an autogenous tig square butt weld.

Stainless exhaust system i always tigged mine and used straight argon and purged the system as well. The process of mig welding stainless steel basically requires you to continuously feed a solid electrode wire inside the weld pool along with some shielding gas in order to protect the weld from all sorts of contamination. Jeremy shows you the proper way on how to but the two peices of pip. Spray arc short circuiting or pulsed arc transfer.

Gmaw or mig welding stainless pipe is normally a challenge because of the need to purge the inside of the pipe and because different shielding gases are required than what is used on carbon steel. Even though most of the welding machine manufacturers have included a table of materials and voltage settings in the machine it is highly important for you to pick the right kind of gas and electrode wire to be used for mig welding stainless steel. When mig welding on stainless you usually have three choices of transfer depending on your equipment. I made mine from 304 stainless tube.

When welding stainless steel with mig any ferrous material including contamination by a steel liner in the weld pool can easily cause rust spots on finished work. Naturally you ll also make sure your mig torch is in good condition before starting to weld. That is smooth and sweet. Before i decided how to weld the header i used a magnet on the weld as well as flanges and bung to learn that the flanges and bung seemed to be carbon steel but those welds were holding up fine since they were tig welded with stainless wire.

Before starting welding wears hand gloves face mask apron as protection from spark and light.