When doing rust repair, restoration work, or collision repair you may need to replicate OEM resistance spot welds. Those welders can be very expensive and can require a lot of power to use. We decided to make a kit that allows you to use any MIG welder that uses Tweco style nozzles. This kit stands your tip off of the metal the perfect distance to allow you to replicate original spot welds. Learn more about the kit below.
Until now, you’d spot-weld primarily by using a large resistance welder, but now you can use your MIG welder together with this Spot Welding Kit from Eastwood to achieve the same professional results.
Spot welding is accomplished by clamping two panels together and fusing them with a number of sequentially-placed welds, rather than in a continuous bead, to hold the panels together. This kit is designed to be used with Eastwood’s welders as well as any other brand welder that utilizes a Tweco®-style MIG torch.
The combination of the Spot Pliers and Spot Nozzle assures complete welds all the way through, and exact duplication of each spot weld.
For 18-gauge steel, or if you’re using a less-than-175-amp MIG welder, simply use the supplied double-ended HSS drill bit to drill a 0.187″ pilot hole in the top panel only, and then complete the spot weld as usual. The pilot hole serves to assure complete and full penetration from the top to the bottom panel. This type of weld is far greater in strength than a simple resistant spot weld, but produces the exact OE look, with greater weld strength.
I’m using a MIG175 and the Eastwood spot welding kit to spot weld aluminium using the technique described on U-tube of putting a thin steel sheet either side of the two aluminium sheets to be joined. I am joining thin aluminium sheet less than 1/16 thickness to an 1/8 thickness aluminium backing piece and using two pieces of about 20 gauge BZP steel as the sacrificial support pieces. I clamp these 4 pieces as normal and try to spot weld but all that happens is that the welder ‘hisses’ and there is no arc. What am I doing wrong?