Pulsed TIG Welding of Aluminum

As a consequence of developments in the electronic control of welding power sources, there has been a trend for even inexpensive and widely used metal inert gas (MIG) and tungsten inert gas (TIG) welding machines to be equipped, as standard, with a high performance pulsed current waveform control function. Meanwhile advances in understanding of pulsed arc welding phenomena and the clarification of the associated functional effects have resulted in a gradual expansion of its scope of application and of improvements in practical performance. Thus inert gas shielded arc welding is entering an epoch when full scale pulsed arc welding will become standard. In this article, the progress of the development of pulsed TIG welding of aluminium is introduced, followed by a description of the main characteristics and finally examples of recent research concerning the improvement of weld quality are introduced.