Welding on a keg

[tucker0104]

I am wanting to weld some flanges on my keg. If I am using a mig welder, can I just get some stainless steel wire to weld with?

[firewater69]

Sure, i tig welded all of my stainless to stainless joints. a mig is no different as long as your filler is stainless.

[corene1]

You must also use the proper shielding gas. A Tri mix is recommended . 90% helium-7.5% argon- 2.5 % CO2.

[InglisHill]

100% Argon is fine.

Don't weld to hot or you will get weld sugaring on the inside of the keg, if in fact, that bothers you. test your settings out on a bit of scrap first

[corene1]

Again this comes up. Yes you can use Argon but it is very messy and heat control is more difficult. Also maintaining a smooth arc is more difficult. I do this everyday for a living but you may do what you like . This may help but look it up for yourself.


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[Aquafish]

Tucker0104 the shielded wire for a mig welder is hard to find and very expensive. Mig with gas is much better but again expensive. Tig is a great weld but takes expensive equipment and lots talent. You can do just as well soldering SS with mapp gas and the proper flux. The flux is most important. You can use silver solder or plain solder, all lead free of course. Check out tinting SS on this site works great. I welded a 1 inch SS coupler to a SS keg admiditly it took a few tries but turned out great. When soldering though the fitting must be a very very tight fit as it is difficult, not impossible, to fill to big a gap. With a little pratice you can secure any fitting to a SS keg with plain solder. There are charts showing the PSI strenghts of solder, silver solder, etc. if you are worried about strenght. How this helps

[corene1]

Tucker0104 the shielded wire for a mig welder is hard to find and very expensive. Mig with gas is much better but again expensive. Tig is a great weld but takes expensive equipment and lots talent. You can do just as well soldering SS with mapp gas and the proper flux. The flux is most important. You can use silver solder or plain solder, all lead free of course. Check out tinting SS on this site works great. I welded a 1 inch SS coupler to a SS keg admiditly it took a few tries but turned out great. When soldering though the fitting must be a very very tight fit as it is difficult, not impossible, to fill to big a gap. With a little pratice you can secure any fitting to a SS keg with plain solder. There are charts showing the PSI strenghts of solder, silver solder, etc. if you are worried about strenght. How this helps

I would agree . Setting up a MIG welder for Stainless is going to be expensive for a 1 time use. A 2 pound spool of 308 - .035 bare wire is going to run around $15 to $20 dollars. The shielding gas will be quite a bit more if you use tri-mix. Our big K cylinders runabout $90 a unit for refill, Helium is expensive these days. A good quality silver solder with the proper flux will give excellent results as stated above. I have silver brazed hydraulic connections that hold 3000 psi so a still flange should be no problem. Again as noted above a good fit is paramount.

[Chroi]

Tucker0104 the shielded wire for a mig welder is hard to find and very expensive. Mig with gas is much better but again expensive. Tig is a great weld but takes expensive equipment and lots talent. You can do just as well soldering SS with mapp gas and the proper flux. The flux is most important. You can use silver solder or plain solder, all lead free of course. Check out tinting SS on this site works great. I welded a 1 inch SS coupler to a SS keg admiditly it took a few tries but turned out great. When soldering though the fitting must be a very very tight fit as it is difficult, not impossible, to fill to big a gap. With a little pratice you can secure any fitting to a SS keg with plain solder. There are charts showing the PSI strenghts of solder, silver solder, etc. if you are worried about strenght. How this helps

+2.

And don't overheat stainless.

[Truckinbutch]

Anything that Corene says about joining metals is GOSPEL . Take it to the bank or your shop and use it .

[Prairiepiss]

My boilers have all been MIG welded. The first time I used argon. It worked. Not the prettiest welds. Then got trigas. Worked much better. The wells did look better. But I'm still not the best welder. So it didn't look like an expert did it. Would I recommend going trigas just for a couple welds? No I wouldn't. If you are just going to weld a couple bungs on one time. Argon will work. Mite not be pretty. But mine has held up for quite a while now. Now if you are going to do some heavy modding on some stainless stuff. Then I would recommend it.

[corene1]

Yes you can use Argon although not recommended but it will hold and yes it will be a little rough looking. I just responded to the original post with what has worked for years. Here is a little sample I did just for reference on 18 gauge stainless. The first weld is using tri mix and the volts and wire speed I ran it. the second shows the exact same weld with Argon again same volts and wire speed , then a weld with argon showing what change in volts and wire speed needed to be made to smooth it out. Yes silver braze will be the next best method to join stainless but the OP was asking about MIG welding.

[InglisHill]

Thanks for the samples there.

As I said, you can weld it with straight argon.

I would suggest using a few bits of scrap to practice on first.

[corene1]

Thanks for the samples there.

As I said, you can weld it with straight argon.

I would suggest using a few bits of scrap to practice on first.

I have never had that good of results with straight Argon, the extra heat needed to keep the arc stable tends to lead to minor sugaring on the back side of the weld, especially on very thin stainless such as a beer keg. Where the tri mix runs smooth at lower volts so not so much of a problem. How do you run your machine when using MIG and argon for stainless? For most jobs I use 308 Lsi , .035 wire and for dissimilars I use 309 Lsi, .035 wire. Maybe you could post a picture of your results and tell us about your procedures.

[InglisHill]

Sure, next time I have the mig set up for stainless.

Might be a while as 99.9% percent of the stuff I do is tig.