Welding bronze to steel???

WeaverWelder - Tuesday, April 13, 2010 - 2:40pm

Hi there. I know how to weld bronze together. But I don't know ifi can weld bronze and steel together? I don't have a tig set up but I do have a miller 250x mig. If anybody has any info I would truly appreciat it.
Thanks
chris

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I think bronze to steel is

Daedalus - Tuesday, April 13, 2010 - 2:59pm

I think bronze to steel is what most would consider brazing rather than welding.Bronze brazing of steel and iron parts is a common practice.You should be able to get everything you need (including instructions)at any well stocked welding supply house.

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice there is.

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Chris, It can best be done

Rich Waugh - Tuesday, April 13, 2010 - 3:05pm

Chris,

It can best be done using TIG, but you can make it work with MIG, too. You'll need pure argon for shield gas, rather than CO2 or Ar/CoO2 mix, and you will need to get some silicon bronze MIG filler wire. That SiBronze filler is cool stuff for gluing all sorts of oddball stuff together, too.

It takes a hefty amount of amperage at the start of the weld to overcome the heat-sinking capability of the bronze, but once it gets some heat built up you may find that you need to drop the voltage a good bit in the middle of the weld. Gets a bit schizophrenic unless you have someone else there to assist. One trick is to use a bit lower heat and start out on a piece of scrap bronze clamped to the bronze work then move onto the actual stuff when you get up to heat. When it's time to back down on the heat in the bronze, just shift the arc focus to the steel a bit more. With some practice you'll work it out.

Rich

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Hey thanks alot. That is

WeaverWelder - Tuesday, April 13, 2010 - 3:11pm

Hey thanks alot. That is exactly what I wanted to hear.

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welding bronze to steel

Stephen Fitz-Gerald - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 - 3:24am

Stephen Fitz-Gerald
Hey Chris,
I have the same machine as you and you can also weld with silicon bronze wire directly to STAINLESS STEEL.
You can also weld silicon bronze plate to stainless steel with stainless steel wire.
As Rich said you have to have straight argon to use the sili-bronze wire,but for welding with stainless wire I use a tri-mix or Stargon gas.
When running sili-bronze wire in this MIG machine it tends to spatter more so you might want to use a bit of spatter shield to make cleaning easier...

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Thanks Stephen, This

WeaverWelder - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 - 10:54am

Thanks Stephen,
This information is invaluable. It's nice to know that I don't need a new tig welder set up. My business is just starting so every dollar and cent counts right now. If anyone wants to see some of my work my web site is dpiwelding.com. The site is up but not complete. There are photos though.

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your site...

Stephen Fitz-Gerald - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 - 1:56pm

Stephen Fitz-Gerald
I did a Google search but nothing came up but some weld testing sites.
What's your URL ?

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My web site.

WeaverWelder - Friday, April 16, 2010 - 11:33am

http://dpiwelding.com/default.aspx this is the full URL. Take a look and tell me what you think.

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website...

Stephen Fitz-Gerald - Friday, April 16, 2010 - 1:22pm

Stephen Fitz-Gerald
Hey, that's a good basic site.
I especially like the slide show.I should get that set up for mine.
Presumably you'll have a lot more images as time goes on.
I think whoever did this for you did a decent job...

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