I suppose I will start with a bit of background on this project. My son and I built his house in 2019. The architect designed a radius balcony over the front entrance supported by 4 columns. Try as I did to convince my son and daughter in law that a square balcony is simpler to build I could not get either of them to budge. I made the top and bottom plates and the framers did the rest. The issue now was the flashing on the 6 foot radius. The siding installer used straight 10" sections to work around the radius and it looked bad. The only way to make a proper flashing was to cut sections of .040" aluminum sheet and then weld the drip edge to the radius section. We are here now, no way of getting out of this mess.
So after taking some field measurements I laid paper on my shop floor and drew the radius and flashing to be made for templates.
After cutting the templates I used a section of paper on the floor 8' x 4' to make sure I could get all of the sections out of 1 sheet of aluminum.
I picked up a sheet of 3004 .040" Aluminum to cut our the parts needed. The 2" drip edge was sheared at Metal Super Market where I purchased the Aluminum Sheet. The selection of .040" came about as I knew I could hand shear it. Anything thicker I would have to either use my plasma cutter or a router with a 1/4" or less bit to cut the parts. This made the cutting of the parts fairly easy, but now added to the complexity of welding each part together. 6061 cannot be fused as it will crack along the weld. This means a filler rod like 5356 would have to be used at the weld and can take a lot of time. There is 60' of welding needed to be done. 3004 can be fused, but since it is only .040 thickness blowing a hole at the welding seam can be problematic. I will say the welding did bring several challenges. I do have this rotary shear from Princess Auto and it works very well for trimming. The down side is that it only has a 1 1/2" throat. Rough cutting can be done by another method and then accurate final trimming can be done on the rotary shear.
Started on the welding. I did take a few sample sections and attempted to obtain a setting that would allow me to weld this right angle joint. I have a Fronius I Wave 230 welder with water cooled torch. I messed with the AC frequency from 80HZ to 150HZ but settled on 125HZ. The AC balance was set at 60/40, so for 60% of the time the current was flowing to the tungsten to aid in cleaning and 40% the current ( heat ) was going into the weld. I was using a .040 tungsten. The next picture has a nice bead, but I blew through the seam and had to add filler rod to complete the weld.
Also I was not able to go forward with the torch but rather welded backwards which brings about the difficulty that I cannot see the two sections of metal on the back side of the torch.
Another problem was the set up to hold the two sections to be welded with clamps. It became complicated. I took a short section of 1" square tube and cut it on the diagonal to hold the sections to be welded with body metal vise grips. This allowed fast placement of the clamps to hold the two sections to be welded at a right angle. As I stated this alloy can be fused so to obtain enough metal to act as a filler .050" spacers were used to place the drip edge lower. Although this put enough metal to flow out into the weld there was still problems in getting the weld puddle to start before I could run the torch along the seam. I kept blowing holes at the seam and this took a lot of time to repair.
Welding aluminum is like trying to take 2 lengths of solder and join them with a torch. As heat is applied the metal wants to ball up and NOT flow. Aluminum has a lot of surface tension and getting past this took considerable time to understand a solution.
Need to see what I am doing. My Visor helmet has a 2X magnifier and I wear a pair of 2X readers. My face is 6" from the weld zone. My old Cannox Welding machine with HF generator did not have a current control pedal. I worked with that machine for 30 years. It took me considerable time to learn to weld with the new machine, so distressing that I wondered why I bothered to get a new high tech welding machine.
As time pressed on and frustration grew, I kept at it. Welding backwards was not the answer as it left voids and those took time to repair. What I also learned was that there can be no gap at all between the thin sheets of metal, for if there is both parts the aluminum balls up and leaves a hole to be repaired. The deep clamp was important for 2 reasons. 1) it gave me a steady place to rest my hand while welding. 2) it pulled the two sections of metal tightly together. The weld was started at the foot of the clamp and worked to the left, 3" at a time. The best time that I could do with this setup, moving the clamps, welding was 1" a minute. If I blew a hole into the seam, well that added additional time. The flashing was done in 6 sections. and laid out on the shop floor.
On an off note I picked up this Hunter BL500 brake lathe to add to my collection of tools. I have it on casters so that when not in use it is in the barn as I am running out of room in my shop.
Still more to come on this project.
TonyK.
Grimsby Ontario Canada.
So after taking some field measurements I laid paper on my shop floor and drew the radius and flashing to be made for templates.
After cutting the templates I used a section of paper on the floor 8' x 4' to make sure I could get all of the sections out of 1 sheet of aluminum.
I picked up a sheet of 3004 .040" Aluminum to cut our the parts needed. The 2" drip edge was sheared at Metal Super Market where I purchased the Aluminum Sheet. The selection of .040" came about as I knew I could hand shear it. Anything thicker I would have to either use my plasma cutter or a router with a 1/4" or less bit to cut the parts. This made the cutting of the parts fairly easy, but now added to the complexity of welding each part together. 6061 cannot be fused as it will crack along the weld. This means a filler rod like 5356 would have to be used at the weld and can take a lot of time. There is 60' of welding needed to be done. 3004 can be fused, but since it is only .040 thickness blowing a hole at the welding seam can be problematic. I will say the welding did bring several challenges. I do have this rotary shear from Princess Auto and it works very well for trimming. The down side is that it only has a 1 1/2" throat. Rough cutting can be done by another method and then accurate final trimming can be done on the rotary shear.
Started on the welding. I did take a few sample sections and attempted to obtain a setting that would allow me to weld this right angle joint. I have a Fronius I Wave 230 welder with water cooled torch. I messed with the AC frequency from 80HZ to 150HZ but settled on 125HZ. The AC balance was set at 60/40, so for 60% of the time the current was flowing to the tungsten to aid in cleaning and 40% the current ( heat ) was going into the weld. I was using a .040 tungsten. The next picture has a nice bead, but I blew through the seam and had to add filler rod to complete the weld.
Also I was not able to go forward with the torch but rather welded backwards which brings about the difficulty that I cannot see the two sections of metal on the back side of the torch.
Another problem was the set up to hold the two sections to be welded with clamps. It became complicated. I took a short section of 1" square tube and cut it on the diagonal to hold the sections to be welded with body metal vise grips. This allowed fast placement of the clamps to hold the two sections to be welded at a right angle. As I stated this alloy can be fused so to obtain enough metal to act as a filler .050" spacers were used to place the drip edge lower. Although this put enough metal to flow out into the weld there was still problems in getting the weld puddle to start before I could run the torch along the seam. I kept blowing holes at the seam and this took a lot of time to repair.
Welding aluminum is like trying to take 2 lengths of solder and join them with a torch. As heat is applied the metal wants to ball up and NOT flow. Aluminum has a lot of surface tension and getting past this took considerable time to understand a solution.
Need to see what I am doing. My Visor helmet has a 2X magnifier and I wear a pair of 2X readers. My face is 6" from the weld zone. My old Cannox Welding machine with HF generator did not have a current control pedal. I worked with that machine for 30 years. It took me considerable time to learn to weld with the new machine, so distressing that I wondered why I bothered to get a new high tech welding machine.
As time pressed on and frustration grew, I kept at it. Welding backwards was not the answer as it left voids and those took time to repair. What I also learned was that there can be no gap at all between the thin sheets of metal, for if there is both parts the aluminum balls up and leaves a hole to be repaired. The deep clamp was important for 2 reasons. 1) it gave me a steady place to rest my hand while welding. 2) it pulled the two sections of metal tightly together. The weld was started at the foot of the clamp and worked to the left, 3" at a time. The best time that I could do with this setup, moving the clamps, welding was 1" a minute. If I blew a hole into the seam, well that added additional time. The flashing was done in 6 sections. and laid out on the shop floor.
On an off note I picked up this Hunter BL500 brake lathe to add to my collection of tools. I have it on casters so that when not in use it is in the barn as I am running out of room in my shop.
Still more to come on this project.
TonyK.
Grimsby Ontario Canada.