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Old 11-11-2017, 08:50 PM
crystallographic crystallographic is offline
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Originally Posted by Rick Mullin View Post
Somewhat related to this thread, I read in the aluminum welding booklet which Kent publishes that his flux should not be mixed with distilled water only mineral water. I would have thought that mixing the flux with an unknown of minerals and salts would be a problem. Any explanation? Is this true with all such fluxes or just Kent's? I have always tried to use distilled water with other fluxes and never had a problem that I am aware of. Perhaps mineral water would have yielded better performance. Sparkling or non?

Rick
Hi Rick,
I get this question a lot.

I've tested dozens of "waters" across the US and overseas, too. Glacier water, ancient water, mineral, sparkling, purified and spring.

Iron is the enemy of aluminum gas welding flux as it neutralizes it dead, dead, dead. So, we stay away from iron pipes, city tap water, and local well waters in iron-soaked locales such as Bethlehem, PA and Nevada County, CA.
Period.

Years ago I tried a number of distilled waters, also, seeking the penultimate AGW experience, Nirvana or better.
No joy.
I have some double -distilled triple-de-ionized reagent grade water here that came with an MSDS .... Special box ..... Tinted lab-grade bottle/jar .... $$$.
.... No joy.

Overall test results: Distilled water yields not as active a flux mix as with spring/mineral water, effervescing or non.
My theory: the aluminum gas welding flux formulae were developed approx. 1910 - 1930 A.D., waay back when we still had clean naturally-mineralized water available across the US.
Using "commonly-available" water was probably one of the criteria for the chemists working on these fluxes (the AGW fluxes numbered over 40 different ones back in 1956 - just the AGW fluxes, alone). So I surmise they availed themselves of a dozen samples from large industrial locales for testing their flux formulas, and something in those common minerals is accounted for in that chemistry. I cannot think of any other reason, and am open to further thinking on this topic.
(I have been in communication with a number of flux manufacturing companies over the years, and my dealings have been with the tech-reps or the master chemists in the labs there.)

Personally, I do not mind using Gerolsteiner, Evian, Fiji, or San Pellegrino waters, at all. They sure seem to work better than distilled, so I recommend "not tap water, not distilled, and not local well water" in favor of good clean bottled spring water, because of my own careful testing. But, I may be wrong, and some source of distilled H2O may give better results than I have seen, so far.

In general, I'd recommend trying a few different bottled spring waters, like I have done on many occasions. You can always drink them if they are sub-par for welding - as I know a lot of people are drinking waters that I cannot weld with ....
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Kent

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"All it takes is a little practical experience to blow the he!! out of a perfectly good theory." --- Lloyd Rosenquist, charter member AWS, 1919.

Last edited by crystallographic; 11-11-2017 at 08:56 PM.
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