Journal of Materials Processing Technology 239 (2017) 18–30

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Journal of Materials Processing Technology

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jmatprotec

Geometrical and microstructural characteristics of the TIG-CMT

hybrid welding in 6061 aluminum alloy cladding
Ying Liang a,b , Shengsun Hu a,b , Junqi Shen a,b,∗ , Heng Zhang a,b , Peng Wang a,b
a
Tianjin Key Laboratory of Advanced Joining Technology, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China
b
School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: A tungsten inert gas (TIG)-cold metal transfer (CMT) hybrid welding process is proposed. Compared with
Received 3 April 2016 the conventional TIG-metal inert gas/metal active gas (MIG/MAG) hybrid welding method, the charac-
Received in revised form 3 August 2016 teristic of TIG-CMT welding process is that there is no interaction between the two arcs. The addition
Accepted 4 August 2016
of TIG can improve the wettability of molten metal. The microstructure in hybrid joint is coarser than
Available online 9 August 2016
that in conventional CMT joint, and the microhardness in weld metal (WM) of hybrid joint is higher than
that of conventional CMT joint. In TIG-CMT hybrid welding process, the TIG current plays an important
Keywords:
role in changing contact angle and the dilution of weld bead. Fine equiaxed grains have been observed in
Cold metal transfer (CMT)
Tungsten inert gas (TIG)
partially melted zone (PMZ) and coarsened equiaxed grains exist in heat-affected zone (HAZ). The width
Hybrid welding of PMZ increases with the increase of heat input. More heat input can also lead to the coarser columnar
Cladding dendrite. In all weld joints, the microhardness in HAZ remains at a low level, and the microhardness in
Aluminum 6061 PMZ always has a sharp decrease from WM to HAZ. The outcome of this work shows that the TIG-CMT
hybrid process is suitable for the multi-passes welding of aluminum alloy.
© 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Tungsten inert gas (TIG) and metal inert gas (MIG) welding are
the most extensive gas shielded arc-welding processes used in join-
ing aluminum and its alloys due to their preferable flexibility and
economy. TIG welding is a high-quality and stable process which
has characteristics of less spatter and better weld bead appearance,
but there are some problems associated with this process like low
welding speed, incomplete penetration and lack of the deposited
metal. On the contrary, MIG welding provides the advantage of a
high-efficiency welding method with high deposition rate due to
high heat input. The excessive heat input can also cause quality
problems such as deeper penetration and more serious distortion.
Kanemaru et al. (2014) pointed that during MIG welding process,
the arc is often unstable although the pure argon has been adopted
as shielding gas for the welding process. The instability of the weld-
ing process imposes the weld defects such as spatter, oxidation of
the bead surface and weld bead roughness. Therefore, TIG welding
process is preferred over gas metal arc welding process to produce
high quality weldments, as suggested by Temmar et al. (2011).
∗ Corresponding author at: School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tianjin
University, Tianjin, 300072, China.
E-mail address: shenjunqi@tju.edu.cn (J. Shen).
The cold metal transfer (CMT) process is a modified MIG weld-
ing process based on short-circuiting transfer process which was
invented by Fronius in 2004. Kah et al. (2013) introduced that
the short-circuiting transfer process named “mechanically assisted
droplet deposition” which is applied in controlling short circuit
by retracting the wire from the short-circuiting. Schierl (2005)
reported that the droplet detachment mode of CMT process is
without the aid of the electromagnetic force compared to the
conventional MIG process, so the spatter can decrease. The basic
principles of the CMT process have been investigated by Pickin and
Young (2006). There are two main features of the CMT process:
one is at the point of short circuit with low current corresponds to
a low heat input, another one is the short circuit occurrence in a
stable controlled manner. From the above, the special metal trans-
fer method of CMT process can realize low thermal input to the
weldment and the no-spatter welding process. Feng et al. (2009)
previously pointed that the CMT process is especially suitable to
weld thin aluminum alloy sheets due to the low heat input and the
slight deformation. Additional studies by Zhang et al. (2009) and
Cao et al. (2013) have concentrated on the application of the pro-
cess in dissimilar alloys joining owing to the low heat input which
restrains the formation of brittle intermetallic compounds.
The existing reports about the CMT process employed as a
cladding method for aluminum alloy are limited. Pickin et al.
(2011) studied the features of CMT process and explored it as a

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2016.08.005
0924-0136/© 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
 Y. Liang et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 239 (2017) 18–30 19

Table 1
Chemical composition (wt.%) of 6061 aluminum alloy.

Material Si Fe Cu Mn Mg Cr Zn Ti Al

AA6061 0.4–0.8 < 0.7 0.15–0.4 < 0.15 0.8–1.2 0.04–0.35 0.25 < 0.15 Bal.

low-dilution cladding process for applying to ternary alloyed (Al- Table 2

Chemical composition (wt.%) of ER4043 filler material.
Cu-Mg) aluminum plate. Rajeev et al. (2014) suggested that the
CMT process can be an effective and energy-efficient technique for Material Al Si Mg Cu Fe Mn Zn Ti
depositing thick coatings and is useful in weld repair of aluminum ER4043 Bal. 5.6 0.05 0.3 0.8 0.05 0.1 0.02
alloy components. Ola and Doern (2014) showed that the CMT pro-
cess is suitable for low-dilution cladding of nickel-base superalloy,
and has a great potential to be used as a method for repairing 2. Experimental procedure
high-temperature equipment. Cong et al. (2015) investigated the
effect of arc mode by CMT process on the porosity characteristic The base material was 6061 aluminum alloy in initial T4 con-
of additively manufactured Al-6.3%Cu alloy. Kumar et al. (2016) dition with a thickness of 4 mm. The material was cut into several
adopted the pulsed-CMT process to weld 2 mm AA6061 thin steel. pieces with 300 × 50 × 4 mm3 dimensions. The filler metal used for
The effect of welding current and welding speed on heat input and the welding process was ER4043 with a diameter of 1.2 mm. The
geometrical properties were investigated. nominal chemical composition of the base metal and the filler metal
Hybrid heat source is a useful method to solve practical prob- were shown in Tables 1 and 2, respectively. In TIG-CMT welding sys-
lems, which the conventional heat source cannot be achieved. tem, Advanced CMT 4000 R welding power source and TIG Magic
Various hybrid arc welding methods have been proposed by pre- Wave 4000 welding power source were adopted. The TIG welding
vious researchers. Kanemaru et al. (2014) developed a hybrid process was used AC mode, and the frequency was 60 Hz.
TIG-MIG system and proposed that the balance of current between Pure argon (99%) was employed as shielding gas with flow
the TIG and MIG arcs influences the arc stability. Meng et al. (2014) rates of 10 L/min and 20 L/min for TIG and CMT, respectively.
pointed out a TIG-metal active gas (MAG) hybrid arc welding pro- The schematic of welding experimental set-up is shown in Fig. 1.
cess, which could achieve a high speed welding for mild steel. They The contact tip to work piece distance (CTWD) of CMT (h1 ) was
also found that the assistant TIG arc is able to effectively stabi- maintained at 15 mm, and the distance between electrode tip and
lize the MAG welding process. Zhang et al. (2014) constructed a workpiece of TIG (h2 ) was maintained at 4 mm for all over welding
MIG-TIG hybrid welding method in brazing process, which was experiments. Both the TIG torch and CMT torch were clamped by a
successfully applied in joining aluminum to stainless butt joint. A special fixture, which could adjust the distance, axiality and heights
synchronous TIG arc was used to heat the workpiece in the process. of the torches. Both torches were perpendicular to the weldment.
Especially, the additional heat on steel side brought by the auxiliary TIG torch was installed in front of CMT torch. The distance between
TIG arc could optimize the wetting performance of molten metal. the centers of two torches (d) was kept at 30 mm in the whole
The lower heat input in the CMT welding process will result welding process, which was beneficial to implement the stable
in inferior wettability of the aluminum alloy cladding, and will hybridization. In welding, the arc of TIG was first to be ignited, then
influence the forming of multi-passes welding. The heat input is CMT was ignited. All claddings were produced at flat position with
a key factor in improving the wettability of the molten metal. clamping devices to prevent distortion. The welding parameters in
The smaller contact angle can be obtained by increasing CMT cur- this experiment were illustrated in Table 3.
rent, but the stable short-circuit transition of CMT is unable to High-speed CCD camera (PHOTRON FASTCAM super 10 KC) with
be guaranteed at higher current (more than 100A). This available a frame rate of 1000 frames per second was used to obtain the
parameter range of the CMT process has been examined by Pickin images of arc including metal transfer behavior, and verity the fea-
et al. (2011). As can be seen, the CMT welding process cannot sibility of TIG-CMT welding system. An electrical signal acquisition
be blindly expected as an ideal method by only increasing the system with a sampling rate of 100 kHz was developed to cap-
current to improve the cladding formation. Accordingly, adding ture current and voltage waveforms. The work piece material was
a stable TIG arc to the workpiece for preheating can increase the wiped with ethanol before welding to remove impurities, such as
total heat input on the workpiece and improve the wettability of oil and grease, which were typically present after cutting process.
the molten metal. The introduction of TIG arc can also enhance Transverse section of the weld joint was polished using a stan-
the intrinsic high-efficiency peculiarity of CMT welding. Based on dard metallographic procedure. The metallurgical specimens were
this opinion, a TIG-CMT hybrid welding process is proposed in etched by modified Keller solution (50 ml H2 O, 1 ml HCl, 1.5 ml HF,
this investigation. Compared with the conventional TIG-MIG/MAG and 2.5 ml HNO3 ). The microstructure was observed by OLYMPUS
hybrid welding method, the characteristic of TIG-CMT hybrid weld-
ing is that the two arcs have no interacting in this process. The Table 3
objective of this study is to examine the TIG-CMT hybrid process Welding parameters for TIG-CMT hybrid welding.
as an effective cladding technique for repair aluminum alloy com-
Specimens No. Welding speed CMT welding TIG Welding
ponents. Microstructure and microhardness properties of the joints (mm/s) current (A) current (A)
welded by hybrid process were inspected, and compared with those
1 5 50 60
of the conventional CMT process. The effects of welding parame-
2 5 50 80
ters on the weld geometrical and microstructural characteristics 3 5 50 100
during hybrid welding process, which are crucial in manufactur- 4 5 60 80
ing high quality cladding, were studied and discussed. The change 5 5 70 80
6 7 60 80
tendencies of hybrid weld microhardness with different welding
7 9 60 80
parameters were also analyzed. Ultimately, the multi-passes man- 8 7 70 0
ufacturing were successfully achieved by using TIG-CMT hybrid 9 7 70 100
welding. 10 5 0 80
11 5 0 100
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