Spot Welding Sheet Metal

Learn how to mig weld automotive sheet metal in about 5 minutes or less.

Spot welding sheet metal.

Spot welding uses the heat from an electrical current to join 2 pieces of metal quickly and is typically used for joining sheet metal. Vehicle manufacturers use resistance spot welding in the factory. It s also easy to do with a spot welding machine which has 2 electrode tongs about 6 inches 15 cm long that pass an electrical current through the metal to fuse them together. The process uses two shaped copper alloy electrodes to concentrate welding current into a small spot and to simultaneously clamp the sheets.

These joints created by resistance spot welding form a button or fused nugget resistance spot welds are found typically on flanges staggered in a single row of consecutive welds. Resistance spot welding is the joining of overlapping pieces of metal by applying pressure and electrical current. For 3 32 7018 s it s about the same. Mig welding is the preferred method for most automotive bodywork and since sheet metal is the thinnest of metals a large expensive mig unit is usually not required.

To most manufacturers spot welding is the most economical way to join two pieces of sheet metal. Tig welding sheet metal. I keep it short and to the point in this welding instructional video and show how ve. The majority of the sheet metal welding i ve done was with a 90 amp 110 volt welder.

To weld sheet metal with solid wires use electrode positive ep or reverse polarity. Spot welding or resistance spot welding is a type of electric resistance welding used to weld various sheet metal products through a process in which contacting metal surface points are joined by the heat obtained from resistance to electric current. While joining sheet metal is the most common use for the process resistance welding rw equipment actually can be used for a large variety of joining and heat treating projects some of which are not so well known. A good heat setting for 1 8 6011 rods on thin material is about 80 90 amps.

Just grab a piece of sheet metal to get the heat set correctly and go to town. Don t attempt to weld thin materials like sheet metal with flux cored wires which put more heat into the base metal.