How do you TIG weld COPPER?! 🤔 

One of the most informative welding videos (across YT) in recent memory- Thanks!

ive done a lot of bar tops, stills, and specialised copper work for distilleries and that, i always shear the same sheet i make the part out of and use that as filler metal, when its all polished it looks the same and same strength as parent metal.

Been there, done that 20 years ago in another life. Did some 1/2" copper plate with a miller 300 welder. It did not like it one bit and tripped out the 100 amp breaker after the first pass. Had to preheat before the rest of the welds. Turned out beautiful. The Miller Dynasty 700 with the 450A water cooled torch doesn't even notice it and ripped thru like nothing. Throw in Helium and there is just about nothing in reason can't be welded. Love the tip to use Romex wire for filler, I did like others suggested and simply sheered sheet down for the filler.

This is a great video on welding. Very comprehensive on the more advanced details.

Many years ago working at a shop where we made architectural doors and they took on a job from a sculptor who had no metalworking experience so I ended up fabricating all his pieces of his sculpture. One of the pieces was a copper cube about 12 in x 12 in and we just had the shear Guy shear off some of the parent material and that's what I use for the filler and it worked really well. Now this sculptor guy wanted the cube mirror finished which we did, and then he came in to inspect the work and decided he wanted the cube to now be a matte finish so he took a sanding disc to it and ruined this beautiful mirror finish we had created. And many of the guys in the shop want to lunge at him and choke this guy out ruining their work but he was the sculptor it was his right to do that.

This was really helpful. I had heard about helium being helpful in increasing heat input. Your video really brought it home for me.

I recently did some 2"od, 1/4" wall copper pipes. Went through the "trying gasses and blowing up tungsten" phase until I figured it out. 300 amps, clean clean clean, preheat with MAP gas torch, 1/8" 2% Thoriated tungsten and used 12g. household wire as filler. That was a real test for me since I dont do a ton of TIG welding, but do have my pipe certs.

That was really entertaining as well as packed with good information. Nicely filmed too !

Great video, thank you for sharing. I tuned in because I want to start making some copper sinks to put on market and I figured why not weld them up instead of soldering.

Another bucket of nugget of knowledge! I’m looking forwarded trying this but i’ll have to find the right project for it.

Great video Paul!! Extremely informative!!

Many years ago I made a six foot decorative glass dome. I needed to create an armature out of 1/4" copper rods. I had no idea what I was doing, Ended up using the tig to silver solder the whole thing. Amazingly it worked great.

Thanks for the info and demonstration.

Welding copper is a special beast with about every method.

You did an awesome job!

Excellent video not too much out there on copper tig done this well.

Interesting stuff. Very good information, looking forward to giving it a shot.

I had to change my RU-vid bell notifications because they changed it. But excellent information in the "Adventures of TIG And Copper". Thank you as I like to learn. Believe it or not, but I still use a SnapOn 400 Watt soldering gun and is now 40 years old! Since I use the the 400 watt tip, it works great on most all things automotive but honestly, but if I have much larger cables to solder, shrink wrap, cover with friction tape and secure in place, I have my grandpas soldering iron. He was an electrical engineer graduating in 1932 and ran field generators in WW-II for this new invention called radar. Yes, the original chunk of copper cast onto a steel rod with a wooden handle. 1" square and shaped into a point with flats, it was "The Tool" for decades. It was originally held in a fixture and heated by a hand pressured alcohol torch. Modern times, millions have no idea that ceramic knob & tube electric wire is not un-safe as it was separated, the ends where twisted and soldered for all connections! It was allowed in the middle of a run without a service box to fix it if a failure happened. Connections to switches had soldered leads, it was cover with friction tape. A word most older worker in home improvement stores would even know! Friction tape is way better than todays PVC w/natural rubber as the sticky stuff. The wire has changed for the better as it was cloth covered asphalt covered cloth mass produce for decades. It simply hardened with time and would crack. The fact it was separated by ceramic knob and tube, but all connections were twisted and soldered was Normal. This made it safer. I simply wanted to know how to extend the soldering tips life as the erodes with use. Costing $30.00 each but still sold! This is an insulated tube over a heating element with a copper tip. I have owned a MIG since 1984 new, but never had a reason to but a TIG or other! Thanks again for sharing your knowledge, background and experience! Thanks. DK, ASE Master Tech since 87, retired.

Awesome video, learnt a lot, cheers!

That opening copper joke just made my day

good stuff for a DIY spot welder project (low voltage high current). I wanna do this now

Nice job fella. I really learned a lot and the memories you gave me were really good. Thanks fella too. vf

At first I thought Paul Brown was cool cause I am an Ohio State / Browns fan, but I have really been enjoying watching his videos! I liked learning about his old welders like that Powcon... I always saw those, but didn't know much about them. Anyways, he's definitely a wealth of knowledge and I enjoy his vids a lot!

I've been welding for over 40yrs fully skilled in all ferrous and none ferrous welding. Thus is the 1st time I've seen someone quench in a bog (toilet) for the US watchers Very good 👍

I just started learning welding next to being a cnc operator. Both communities or crafts rather have their own culture and love for their job, but i must say welding is a lot more fun haha.

Yes I've done alot of Copper and Brass. the trick is Helium Nothing can take it's place It's an extreme HeaT agent That when used with Aluminum Makes it Harder and it Machine's Quite beautifully.

I would have loved to see pieces being joined to see how strong the weld is.

Great demonstration thanks a lot this helped me with a copper Weld issue I was running into. LARGE CUP and either add helium or pre-heat. Wanted to give you a friendly warning about dunking anything hot in toilet. If the object is SUPER HOT and ends up transferring to a localized area of the bowl, the porcelain MAY develop fracture lines or downright crack apart (either immediately or after someone settles into the seatbelt). Witnessed this after someone tried to quench a part he was heat treating 🎉.

Very good information nice video bro keep it up God bless

Thank you learned something

My last job i would weld orders of bus bars. Only a couple inches wide but would weld with a graphite backer and copper heat sinks all around the joint. I would max my machine at 400 amps and use half a piece of wire in just 2 inches of weld. Full pen welds I would dab at least 3 inches of wire in each dab. I would sand and blend both sides of the weld then each part had to be Rockwell tested to make sure I didn't put too much heat into the entire part and make them brittle. Very challenging parts but I actually enjoyed how technical they were. I did them by the hundreds and they were only 1/8" thick! Haven't met a lot of people who have welded copper on a manufacturing scale.

I thought he was joking bout the toilet thing at first, but then nope, he was serious lol Good video tho, enjoyed the info👍

Great vid

The romex ground often has a clear coating on it, not just oxidation. You probably won’t remove it with a couple swipes of scotch-brite and if you don’t completely remove it, you’ll be putting hot plastic into your weld and it might not go so well.

Thanks for the video. I was looking at welding 3/8" copper bus bars, but I'm not sure my TIG machine will put out the amps needed. I do have Helium though.

Great video

Copper puddle is a neat colour

“Don’t let your wife see you doing that.” Lol

Try weld it with AC. I use AC when I weld coper, thinks it welds better that way mutc less oxid in the welding zone.'

It almost looks like it wets out like aluminum does? But I'll definitely have to get some copper and experiment with it and see what it feels like.

Paul, I really enjoyed this video, very informative as well as entertaining. I knew that copper takes more heat to weld but your demo really put that into perspective, wow, 5 times more conductivity than steel. I had a question about your gas mixing setup, it looked like you just had a tee from two different tank regulators going into your supply line for your welder? I was wondering if you get decent gas mixing using that setup and if there are any issues with backfeeding through the lower pressure regulator from the higher one. I'd like to experiment with different gas blends but was always told that I'd need a proper gas mixer or it wouldn't work.

Acids are really fantastic at taking off those copper oxides too. Just make sure the welding job is ok with that. for some applications you need to keep it sulfur or chlorine free. Vinegar or citric acid could work well too. always makes it really shiny.

Grest video!. What is the filter you use on the respirator?

I weld copper products and also hard face them. All our welding requires pure helium gas. I don't know the thickness of the copper we are welding but we are usually running our machines at about 530/560A.

You can get reels of just plain bare copper wire from Home Depot or Lowe's or any hardware store, it's used inside electrical boxes to connect all the grounds together or to connect the ground of the NMC cable(s) to a metal electrical box. You pay average copper wire prices for it (which is to say, not cheap, but probably less expensive than copper oriented towards being used as welding supplies specifically). And it's available in many many diameters, most hardware stores should have everything from 10AWG down to probably 16 or 18AWG. Thicker than 10AWG is available, but it tends to be only available as stranded wire, which isn't that useful for welding purposes unless you're intending to join that wire to another piece of copper (such as you might see in a bus-bar type application, tho a crimped and bolted connection is far more common for that). If you need thinner, you can buy solid wire ethernet cable or doorbell wire, ethernet cable is supposed to be 23AWG copper, doorbell wire is probably in the 20-22AWG range (but it'll say right on the package what it is). Apparently there's also wire specifically for thermostats. Now of course, if you for some reason need thicker copper for your fill rod, well 10AWG is already thicker than most fill rod, but you still have options from the hardware store, if you don't mind putting in some manual labor. Small diameter copper pipe like what you'd use to repair an AC system's refrigerant lines might work, if you can find it. Maybe it'll also be sold as line to hook up to a water dispenser on a fridge, I'm not 100% sure to be honest. Never had a use for copper pipe that small, but I've seen it in houses before so I know it must be sold somewhere. I personally don't see a need for all of those kinds of wire now that ethernet cable is so common, it has 8 wires in 4 twisted pairs, it's far over-spec for just use as doorbell or telephone wire but it's also probably more affordable since it's so much more commonly used than the other dedicated kinds of low-voltage wiring other than coaxial cables. Just so we're all on the same page, when I say NMC I'm using the same language the National Electrical Code uses to gather together all cables similar to Romex, because Romex is technically a trademarked name of a SPECIFIC BRAND of NMC (just like how "Band-Aid" is a specific brand of adhesive bandage, and Kleenex is a specific brand of facial tissue, and Coke is a specific brand of cola) NMC is an initialism that stands for "non-metallic cable" to differentiate it from BX aka armored cable or a few other types of cable that include metal in their construction for purposes OTHER than the normal task of carrying electricity. Oh and I called it an "initialism" and not an "acronym" because again I'm using a more precise term, of course most laypersons will call them acronyms regardless, but in reality there aren't many acronyms out there, the majority of these "words" are properly initialisms because they take the first (aka initial) letter of every word that makes up the full description. It's only an acronym when it doesn't always take the first letter. For example, Laser is an acronym, because it skips some words entirely, it stands for "Light Amplification (by the) Stimulated Emission of Radiation". Interestingly, there are earlier things that use microwaves instead of light, and one of those is called a Maser (Microwave Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation). There are also theoretically Xasers and Grasers too (for X-rays and Gamma rays, respectively). We haven't really had a use for it yet so we haven't really tried to make or theorize making one yet, but there might also be similar things for "ordinary" radio waves of frequencies lower than microwaves as well. Actually, those would be fantastically useful, even if they only have a tiny power output, because they could be used as a precision frequency standard much more accurate than a quartz crystal and potentially consuming less power than an atomic clock (these have already been greatly reduced in power consumption by the development of GPS, as to make GPS work you need to put many atomic clocks in orbit (inside the GPS satellites).

When brazing copper, I find a really quick and easy method of cleaning away oxide is to submerge it in Goddard silver dip for 20 seconds, then rinse of. It's designed for silverware but works equally as well on copper.

Copper cleans up nice with acetone when hot.

I'm remembering that Copper is highly conductive but not highly radiative, whereas Aluminum is highly radiative. So the heat is going to build up really fast because it has nowhere to go.

Is there a reason other than you have to strip the other wires in a romex wire bundle that you cant use them? Thanks for the video!

I welded a couple of copper bars together with tig once, never bothered with it any more. Now I'm going to have to try it some more. I think at our shop we even have some argon - helium mix used for something.

What’s the tungsten that your using

I welded copper to 316 stainless a few times. It was kinda tricky to start but welded nicely. I used stainless filler material and pure argon.

Learning all sorts of things, learning the effects of various gas' and mixtureses on metals (gloves & hands) is invaluable. Never thought of a toilet as a welding tool, other than to watch welding videos on...

I successfully welded two pieces of 3/8” copper tubing together with my tig.

The electric wire will be electrolytic copper and be at least 99.5% pure copper. The 0.5% remainder will consist primarily of silver with lesser amounts of other elements. Burnthrough will also occur more so on a pure metal rather than an alloy. A pure metal, such as the copper types that you are using here, will have a very well defined melting point. This is different from steel and aluminum alloys where there is a temperature difference between the temperature at which the alloy begins to turn to a solid plus a liquid to where it turns into a pure liquid. For steels, this can be several hundred degrees Fahrenheit depending on the alloy composition, especially carbon content.

Are you able to tig weld copper to stainless steel by chance. I always wanted to but couldn’t find anything except brazing but I want complete weld is it possible?

I really think you missed a big opportunity to utilize that bottle of helium for what it’s really used for! Making chipmunk link voices and balloons! 😏😁

I just wanna weld up a couple third hands out of some copper rod I found. Looks pretty straightforward, maybe use some scrap wire out of some Romex. Doesn't need to be pretty.

Excelente video estimado! Sería bueno q lo traduzca a español ! Gracias por compartir atte Nelson Barbero desdé argentina

sadly your respirator has particulate filters on it which will do nothing to protect you from the fumes created in welding. I am by no means a Safety NAZZI but I do believe if you are putting out safety information you should do so correctly .

I like this guy, hope i can be like that one day .. if I make it. Im interested in TIG copper/brass/bronze, this was really helpful, thanks for sharing .... ps idk where I can get He though, seems not common at the gas supplies in my area that I know of

Which form of welding copper is actually food grade safe? I've seen copper welds on distillation equipment, is why I ask

Great video. One quick question though, can I use helium with an air cooled TIG torch?

What’s the Lincoln book he’s using??

What book is he referencing in the beginning of this video?

That respirator doesn't protect against fumes, but 95% of particles. Gas cartridge recommended

Welded copper-nickel pipe before.

Never used tig for copper, i use oxy propane or you can use oxy acet, no need to clean or use a flux. Watch out for over heating bubbling with Oxy acet as it makes the weld joint bubble making it weak. Filer wire just use electric copper wire. The joints welded using this method are that strong they with stand swage crimping and lathing.

Dang he tore that plate up

What is the book y’all are using as a reference

I miss Bob Moffatt..

Can't even get helium here in Las Vegas. Well, it just takes a couple weeks, but who has time for that?

There is a lot of copper melting off of the filler rod before it even sees the puddle?

I have tried my self with 200A on a 20Kg 100/15 mm bar! It was hopeless. It spread the heat so fast that I couldn't open a single moment the fusing bath. Even if I've keep heat the other end with a big acetylene torch. It starts to be OK when the bar get red, but to hot to stay close, also impossible to weld because of oxidation. Yah, probably if you have a small piece, as he do, you may be able to add a few drops from the stick, but to weld two parts and have a real welding... it is not possible.

Watch your angle and wait for your puddle. Your filler metal burn back is seriously screwing your weld consistency.

What size cup you running and why, tks

Steady that torch hand a lil big guy🤣🤷

Could you silver solder on copper with tig?

Does the copper loose some of its conductivity as is welded?

Copper to Carbon Steel which filler wire using sir I please tell me sir

Tried to repair a split in a huge brewing copper, using oxy/acet. on reverse side of DC tig to keep heat running the joint. Near impossible the heat needed and trying to weld, gloves could not withstand the extreme heat for long. Another instance I had a customer welding 6-8 MM copper components using guillotined off cuts for filler, they had a 500amp dc tig to get the heat into plate to start the pool, once heat up to speed could then back off current to weld. Hope this gives insight to welding copper not being a walk in the park . Thanks for interesting👍👏 video

Are you guys listening to my conversations?

How about TIG welding two separate copper pieces together 🤔.

Dang your video killed my hopes of making art projects out of copper tubing , guess I’m taking all my scraps and cashing it in so I can buy a mig for steel.

I'd try this at work but not sure about gas. We use use argon/hydrogen

I weld 1 inch thick copper plate

👏

Watch those sharp corners if you actually use a toilet to cool your parts!! That ceramic is tough stuff, but a decent rap from a sharp corner can easily cause a crack.

classic cooling facility!🤣🤣🤣🤣

Fuck yea 🔥

I think this might work with brass or copper radiators... just saying

I messaged you over on Instagram but you are probably too busy to have seen it. I’d love to find out more about yourself and your career? What is your story? I bet it’s a great one.

can you actually weld some pieces together?

My question is why weld copper? Why not TIG braze it? Brazing copper doesn't seem particularly demanding as far as heat goes. Maybe not as strong as welding, but it's copper, how strong could it possibly be?

👍👍👍

Is this dude seriously cooling the piece in the bowl of the fucking toilet?! What the hell? LMFAO!

While welding both the helium ones looked horrendous. Looked like it was super dirty and flaky

Just like welding water 💦

If you forget to flush, the salt and uric acid will turn your work piece green like the Statue of Liberty

You should not be getting a shock from welding at any point. If so you have something wrong with your machine or your ground cable