Just seen this:-

www.durafix.co.uk

Looks interesting, any LCB tried it?

have friends that have used it, not cheap or locost at all but seems to work on low stressed parts, not tried on any structural bits,...

hth

I used this kind of thing many years ago, different name though. Works well but needs quite a bit of heat pumped in so you can still distort sheet metal. Great for welding up alloy intake manifolds and the metal is totally mixed, not just stuck on. The surface must be like surgically clean to work.

About 10 years ago I was casting this stuff for prototype offshore casing drill bit blades incrusted with black diamond cubes. made a aluminium drill that could drill through another aluminium drill made from the same material In the end though all that casting was a pita and just hammered the diamond in instead But did take quite a few packets of rods for Landy repairs...

Not really "welding" really a soldering method, it has it's uses but not for any part subject to any great stress.

It's actually friction brazing. I used it and it's blooming strong stuff (even though when I used it was called technoweld).

When I first bought it I wanted to see how strong it was so I brazed a little bit onto some aliminium and tried applying some weights to it. It took an amazing amount of weight. Compared to abraded + epoxied ali/ali it took about six times the weight for the same contact area.

It did "peel" eventually whereas with welding you'ld expect it to be fully joined to the base material but it was much stronger than I imagined.

The main problem is that you do need quite a lot of heat. Also aliminium transfers heat well so unless you somehow brace your old brazes together they melt when you're doing new ones and the whole thing falls apart.

It sounds like the stuff I used many years ago. No good for structural repairs but fine for fixing ally casings and stuff. The method I used wad to 'soot' the area to be fixed with a yellow oxy/acetylene flame, then set the flame right for the 'welding'. As soon as the soot was burnt off, the metal was the right temperature for the 'welding'. As said, more of an ally brazing or soldering system.

Yeah as said it needs a lot of heat so only really suitable for thin stuff or localised surface repairs. Useful all the same, I've just never got round to using the pack I got and having AC tig means I probably never will.

Yes used similar you can get cheap ali "welding" rods on ebay.. Works for me.. You do have to be careful as the melting point of the rod is close to the ali... I have found the joints to be stronger than parts joined..

If you can solider metal together give it a go...

Ally 'stick' welding here:

http://groups.google.com/group/sci.engr.joining.welding/browse_thread/thread/83b04633a79196cf#