welding vs brasing

[ultimate_monkey]

rangerboy haha wow you really need to read and understand what you were able to copy and past. its says right in there that brazing doesnt melt the base metal here let me quote the line you clearly didnt read...

"The base metal is never melted. It is merely raised to the temperature at which the filler metal will tin – form a smooth film – on the surface of the joint. "


so how bout you "stop saying S#it that isnt true"

and at what point did i say tigging on brake line was the best thing to do? not to mention there are other things to make a tuber chassis out of, such as steel rod, allumium rod.

 

[Big Mike]

Geez there is so much bickering going on around here lately! Damn!

I must say I too find the use of those pictures in the context of this thread to be slightly offensive, and definitely un-called for. Grow up for Christ's sake!

my dad has a tig, mig and arc in the shed but I prefer to braze, the joints are cleaner, it's more than strong and is just easier to light up the torch and go

Exactly. Nothin's easier than brazing, and if done properly the joints require very little if any cleanup. Twist a couple valves, flick the Bic, and go. And if you are just getting started, getting set up to braze is far and away the cheapest investment especially at this small scale.

I have a smaller air cooled 125 amp TIG torch and I find it difficult if not impossible to get the head of the torch into position to weld most of the joints on small 1/10 scale cages, frames, etc. It's usually way easier to braze it.

Very good point. A TIG head is not going to reach all areas of a 1:10th scale chassis easily, where a sprig of Safety-Silv and a flame will go into some really tight spots. You will also have a lot of cleanup to do to get nice looking joints, I don't care how good you are w/ a TIG machine it's not as neat as brazing and the welds need to be ground down afterward to look right on a 1:10th scale chassis.

If properly performed with the right heat, with quality rod and flux that are not contaminated or dirty, a brazed joint will be stronger than the base metal it is adhered to. Even though it does NOT penetrate the base metal...

 

[runnin broke]

I have both type of setups, and I like the brazing rig the best. My son likes the tig the best. The grinding time is too much for me. I have only broken one joint out of say one hundred plus joints, and that was after a big rock hit. The one thing that bugs me about brazing is that when your rig takes a small hit from a rock the paint chips off and shows that bronze colored braze under neath the paint. When I weld the joint is the same color as the tubing and so sort of matches the silver hammered paint I use. This means I don't have to touch paint every time I go out, but I still like the brazing method.

 

[rangerboy]

welp first off sorry about the pics..thanks jason.. lol and when ever i purposely pulled a tube apart or even a 1/8 piece of plate apart is ripped the base metal not broke the braz material . maybe i do my brazing a bit hotter then normal.And it works great so what i do and what you read are 2 diffrent things then.. and you dont even have to use a braze rod to braz.. you can even use a coat hanger.. ever done that.. useing a flux past? So anyways you can all do what you want but for scalers or tubers brazing is the way to go. Only time i would tig somehting is if it was stainless tuber,if your spending that much on the tube then do it realy nice.

 

[Slowkrawl]

welp first off sorry about the pics..thanks jason.. lol and when ever i purposely pulled a tube apart or even a 1/8 piece of plate apart is ripped the base metal not broke the braz material . maybe i do my brazing a bit hotter then normal.And it works great so what i do and what you read are 2 diffrent things then.. and you dont even have to use a braze rod to braz.. you can even use a coat hanger.. ever done that.. useing a flux past? So anyways you can all do what you want but for scalers or tubers brazing is the way to go. Only time i would tig somehting is if it was stainless tuber,if your spending that much on the tube then do it realy nice.

Just...Stop.

It IS possible that a piece of thin wall brakeline might tear before the joint, this still does not mean any penetration happened.


Also, it is impossible to "braze" with a coat hanger. Unless you are using oxy-acetylene and actually oxy-welding, then it's a whole 'nother category and does not require flux. Coat hanger is garbage for oxy-welding anyways, unless your a farmer.

 

[rangerboy]

Just...Stop.

It IS possible that a piece of thin wall brakeline might tear before the joint, this still does not mean any penetration happened.


Also, it is impossible to "braze" with a coat hanger. Unless you are using oxy-acetylene and actually oxy-welding, then it's a whole 'nother category and does not require flux. Coat hanger is garbage for oxy-welding anyways, unless your a farmer.

ok think what you want on the first part, second as a welder i have a large set of oxygen and acetylene torch set i use and yes coat hanger is a garbage steel and yes you can use it with a flux past and you are saying theirs only basically one way to braze. and it sounds like you don't use oxygen to braze? and so what if someone is a farmer so it will only work for them? a its another category well if it involves a torch being used whats it called then? and you can braze steel, cast irion, aluminium, stainless, and others so idk what to tell ya

 

[bad67dart]

Well i got to say, TIG it all, i tig all of my stuff. I will say im not a professional welder, but ive been doing it for awhile. I dont like abrazing stuff cause if you dont get it hot enough, you got yourself a mess. Plus, tigging is not that hard, its all about heat control and being able to feed the filler in smoothly. I can tig something and make it look real nice, alot better than a glob of abraze that you cant even get paint to stick too. Tig you can paint and it wont flake off. but if your going to abraze it, make sure you get it real hot, glowing orange, before you add abraze, or else it will just break off. Just run some test peices. If it breaks at the abraze when doing brakeline, it wasnt hot enough, if it tears the joint out of the brakeline, your in good shape. If you break at the weld in tubing, there wasnt a good penetration! Hope this helps!"thumbsup"

 

[DrunkDriver]

I use a Mapp bottle for brazing tubing together, but I found it wont get thicker gauge angle and stock hot enough. Thank goodness I have a oxy acetylene torch from back in the day.

Drunk

 

[krazykrawler]

I braze all my tube work, comes out looking cleaner, less cleaning up (no grinding needed). I also don't really know how to weld, nor do I have my own welder. This is probably the case for most. a welder is a lot more $ then a MAPP torch and some silver solder

yea what he said:?

 

[R2j]

Not to disagree, but it can be done. I prefer to TIG because I have that available to me. I primarily use solid rod for my projects, just for the shear strength of it, but have no trouble doing brake line either. Pedal control and practice"thumbsup". It's all about what is available to you and what skill level that you may be at. I'm by no means a professional welder, but I have been welding and brazing for over 25 years, being in the HVAC industry, and just do what I know works for me. To each there own.:mrgreen:



Here's some pics with solid 3/16" rod. Just to prove that you can get a TIG head in a tight spot:mrgreen:

 

[orange-appeal]

I TIG weld all my stuff. Been a welder sence 1994 and got a MILLER Diversion 165.
Talk about clean up..... look at a cage thats been brazed and tell me it dont need clean up... ha ha.

 

[subyman]

I agree with orange. If you know what you are doing there is hardly any clean up to a good tig weld. We aren't talking about having to chip flux off the weld like on an arc welder haha.