Inside Frank’s Aluminum Workshop

If you’d have told Frank Armao’s younger self that he’d spend the next 40 years in the welding industry, he probably wouldn’t have believed you. After all, the younger Armao has aspirations of being a metallurgist—certainly not a far cry from welding, but still a very different path.

A snap decision early on in his career led Armao, currently the director of aluminum welding technology at Lincoln Electric Co., Cleveland, down a path that has involved significant world travel—60 countries and counting—allowing him to do and see things most people only find in books or online.

He’s been this magazine’s expert aluminum guru since his first Aluminum Workshop column debuted in the July/August 2002 issue. His 14 years as a contributor makes him the longest-tenured editorial contributor to date. He’s had to juggle his writing responsibilities with those of his regular job and his hectic travel schedule, sometimes hitting send on his latest column from various hotel business offices, on location in exotic cities like Shanghai, or, occasionally, poolside with a tropical drink nearby (I don’t know this for sure about the drink, but it’s always the way I imagined it).

Armao’s extensive aluminum knowledge paired with his loyal readership have made his name almost synonymous with the material he knows just about as well as the back of his hand.

How He Got Here

It was the middle of the Vietnam War when Armao embarked on a career in what he thought would be metallurgy. He interviewed at Westinghouse for two departments, physical metallurgy and welding. Both divisions were hiring, and Armao had his choice between the two. It was, as he said, a pretty easy choice.

“I said something like, ‘I don’t know anything about welding, so I’ll take the physical metallurgy job.’ I worked in the metallurgy group for maybe three months when one day my boss’s boss came over and said that the welding division needed help and that I was being transferred there. That’s how I got started,” he said.

Since then his welding journey took him to an Alcoa location in Pittsburgh where in 1999 he found himself wondering, “What’s next?” So he reached out to a contact in Detroit who floated the possibility of Lincoln Electric needing someone with his skill set. A sent resume, a few phone calls, and an interview later, Armao was a Lincoln Electric employee, where he’s been ever since.

He became active in the AWS D1 Committee—and is still active today—where two interesting opportunities came his way. First, there was the opportunity to become chairman. Second, there was an opportunity to author an aluminum welding column for the AWS Welding Journal. His friend and fellow aluminum expert Tony Anderson of Miller Electric was also being considered for both opportunities.

“It came down to AWS not really wanting another columnist from Lincoln so they gave it to Tony, and we agreed to that between the two of us. He agreed to take the column and I agreed to the chairmanship position of the D1 Committee. At the same time roughly, PWT wanted to start up a column, so since Tony already had a column, I got this one.”

Taming the Aluminum Beast

Since then Armao has answered reader-generated questions about how to choose tungsten type and size for aluminum TIG, which aluminum alloys are weldable and which aren’t, the advantages of a push/pull gun in aluminum MIG, and why 6061 filler doesn’t exist, just to name a few. Aluminum is a completely different animal than steel, and it takes time, trial and error, and experience to learn its nuances. Armao has made a career educating fabricators and welders alike about how to approach aluminum to ensure they avoid critical, costly, and time-consuming mistakes.

The types of question he receives tend to be pretty basic and haven’t deviated much over his 14 years as columnist.

“What I’ve seen in the industry is the players change every three or so years. They don’t stay in one place and they don’t stay welding aluminum all that long; well, some do, but usually it’s a couple of years and then they quit and move on and someone else takes their place.

“There’s a lot of sophisticated guys out there, but the kind of questions I get not only through the magazine but generally tend to stay the same. People are still making the same dumb mistakes today that they made 30 or 40 years ago.”

What kind of mistakes, you ask?

“This happens once a week. I’ll get a phone call and it’s usually something like this:

Caller: ‘I just spent a half-million dollars machining all of these aluminum parts to make a super widget, and now I want to go weld them together but I can’t find anyone to give me a recommended filler metal.’

Me: ‘OK, what alloy is it?’

Caller: ‘It’s 7075.’

Me: ‘Ah. Well the reason no one is going to recommend a filler metal for you is because you can’t weld that alloy. You just wasted a half-million dollars.’

“I’m not kidding about that amount—I’ve gotten that phone call a couple of times.”

Looking Back, Looking Ahead

Armao cites inverter technology as one of the most important advancements in welding over the last two decades. The technology, although it got off to a rough start, has stabilized nicely thanks to significant R&D efforts by power source manufacturers, he said.

As for where welding is headed in the future? It all depends on what’s driving technology and what’s happening within the industries that welding serves.

“Right now what is driving aluminum welding technology is the automotive industry. If you say to me, What advances have there been in the automotive industry? we could probably talk for quite a while. One of the big things out there—and again, the automotive industry is driving this—is finding a way to weld aluminum to steel. That’s a hot topic. Some of the more advanced processes, whether it be laser hot wire or something like that, are hot buttons with the bigger guys, not the smaller guys.

“Are there going to be advances in materials? I’m sure there are, but I have a difficult time envisioning what they are. Equipment is going to continue to advance I’m sure too.”

It’s been a wild ride, and if he has one complaint, it’s that he’d like to receive more reader-generated questions.

Just make sure you ask him if something can be welded before you make a $1 million investment.