Metal Casting Zone

Hi! I am very new to Metal Casting and I'm still in the process of learning the procedures and methodologies.

I've always been curious though...........can you mix molten steel with aluminum?
What would happen if the two were mixed?

Brittle steel. And possibly an aluminum fire. Welcome, by the by! Playing mad scientist can be fun, but it's a steep enough learning curve with the known casting alloys, why give yourself a headache trying to figure out something new? I'm not even sure how good aluminum would alloy with steel, Al tends to eat steel, at temperature the solubility of iron into aluminum is pretty good, but again, all you wind up with is brittle aluminum. Not very useful.

Thank you!

I always thought of adding some aluminum filler rod to a steel puddle with a TIG.

Well, 'twas just a crazy thought.

I was planning to work with aluminum and steel for a spaceframe chassis in a kit car.

Was also finding ways to braze aluminum onto steel. This is possible with a Fronius CMT but I think that requires galvanized steel. Thanks again!

I'll just read a lot more to get started with metal casting.

Hey guys... New to the forum..but,

Aluminum won't alloy properly with steel as with adding a aluminum wire to the weld pool. Now some alloy's of steel do have aluminum added as an alloying element but only in minuscule amounts. Aluminum can be weld-brazed to steels or directly brazed with either certain bronze alloys or silver alloys or bonded by explosive welding. Supposedly the newer friction stir process allows for weld/bonding of aluminum to steel but it still has a high crack potential along the bond seam as the tensile differences are rather high along with crystalline structure differences.

I have fiddled while welding by adding Al wire to a steel pool and what I observe (after some destructive testing) is that wherever the aluminum was added you end up with a crater where the aluminum had pooled and subsequently fell out from different cooling rates.

It seems like it could/should work but, alas...No!!

D