Mig Welding Stainless Steel Pipe

Stainless exhaust system i always tigged mine and used straight argon and purged the system as well.

Mig welding stainless steel pipe.

The preferred method for high purity food grade stainless steel is an autogenous tig square butt weld. 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. Spray arc short circuiting or pulsed arc transfer. When mig welding on stainless you usually have three choices of transfer depending on your equipment.

Jeremy shows you the proper way on how to but the two peices of pip. 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. Besides this process is quite simple and easy to do than tig welding. Alternative gases that you can use are 98 argon and 2 co2 or 98 argon and 2 oxygen mix.

Mode of metal 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. I made mine from 304 stainless tube. Although welding stainless steel may not be as difficult as welding aluminum the metal does have its specific properties that vary from your more common steels.

Naturally you ll also make sure your mig torch is in good condition before starting to weld. Before starting welding wears hand gloves face mask apron as protection from spark and light. 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. 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.

In this short video a new technology is being used. 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. That is smooth and sweet. 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.