[Otto Nobedder]

djknight,

This is a long-shot, but did you work a cold-box (aluminum pipe welding) job at Herr & Sacco, in Pennsylvania?

Steve S

[Tater]

Wehave a lead tinning and bonding process but it is for manual torch not TIG. Our instruction uses the term "bonding" which implies something more like a braze than a weld. Anyway I'd think the fumes generated with TIG would kill you off within hours...

[AndersK]

I'm sorry I spoke so quickly.

Steve S

If everybody would think through all possible scenarios there wouldn't be much said in the world.

Sometimes thinking before talking is like wiping your b...t before you s...t

...and 99 things of 100 you say is usually spot on

[djknight]

Hello,
After a lot of distractions I have finally got to grips with a bit of lead(pb) tig.
First, large ceramic lots of argon(similar to o/a gas envelope)
Amps down to 7(inverter won't go lower)
Melt lead filler into weld pool similar to traditional lead welding
Remembering to Scrape not brush surface oxides off before hand
Hope to post a few photos of welds to lead outer of time capsule
Need to be sound as going 4 feet down in ground on side of hill for one hundred years
The idea is sound enough as Roman lead pipes keep getting dug up over here after many
hundreds of years in the ground

[steeldr.]

welding is when the base metal is melted,soldering and brazing is when the filler metal is applied by capillary action!

[Blue Diver]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought the answer to welding vs brazing vs soldering had to do with temperature, not what metal is melting to another. Welding is anything above 850 deg.. I can't remember the difference between brazing and soldering but soldering is the least amount of heat (<400 deg maybe?). Either way, lead has a melting point of 600 soI would not classify it in welding at any rate....

A forum newbie's 2 pesos anyway.

-Don

[Arno]

Naah.. Temperature is not the key. That all depends on the base material.

Definition is usually as cited above:

- melting the base material to form a join == welding
- melting an additive but not melting the base meterial == soldering/brazing

That's whay there's also plastic welding and glass welding. Plastic can melt at (very) low temperatures, but it is welding and the effect is similar to metal welding (including heat-affected zones and possible structural changes in the weld compared to the base material).

Fiber optics (glass fiber) is also fusion-welded with an arc-welding process in machines like these. You can just make out the electrodes:



Of course glass doesn't oxidise as rapidly as metals when exposed to oxygen/air, so these usually do not use shielding gasses like TIG.

Bye, Arno.