mig welding chrome plated metal?

Hello Im pretty new to welding and wanted to ask a question about what i want to do rather than just try it and make a mess or something. I have a yellow rotator beacon on my truck and want to build a beacon cage for it. I found some old cage material around the house and cut it up and bent it to encircle my beacon. Now I just need to weld some cage material over the top and weld some feet on it. My question is can you mig weld chrome plated metal. Ive looked for things online about doing that and mostly just found articles about how toxic the fumes are. most info about it seem to indicate that chrome plated metal is stainless. All I know about the metal that I have is that it is chrome plated and a magnet will stick to it very well like a chrome bumper. If all chrome plated metal is stanless I do have a spool gun but have not expiramented with it yet. I would be thankful for any info anyone on here could share with me about it thanks.

If a magnet sticks it's not stainless. I have taken a grinder and grind the chrome plating off to the metel underneath

Barneys right grind off the material. You want to have as few contaniments in the material as possible.

depending on the grade of stainless, a magnet can stick. most never chrome stainless simply becuase stainless can be polished to a luster equal to chrome. yes you should gring off the plating especially if the metal is thin or if you have a low amp mig.

I've welded sockets before with good results and they are chrome plated.

How will you replace the lens or bulbs if you weld the cage over the top? Do the guts come out from the bottom?

KsM715 said:

How will you replace the lens or bulbs if you weld the cage over the top? Do the guts come out from the bottom?

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Good thinkin'!
Depends on the chrome. Old school stuff, yes you can without any popping, burning etc. If it's newer Chinese made stuff, nope dot com. It will pop, splatter and bubble the "chrome".

I vote for grinding the chrome out of the way just to be safe.

Also be aware of the welding spatter around ANY glass.Like for example your shop is small and you end up welding the piece close to (or heaven forbid while mounted on) the vehicle. If the spatter hits any glass you will ruin it.
Just my 1 cents worth(hey times are tough)
Jim

Ok I took you guys advise and ground off the chrome plating and gave it a shot. It turned out great just had to get the welder set to the right temp. Also the feet that I welded on to it have bolt holes in them so I can unbolt the cage to change bulbs as you can see from the pics. I plan to fix my beacon and cage to a large piece of angle iron bolted to the hoop/backstop on my flat bed. I just got done and painted it a little while ago. Been workin on it since about 8:00am. Anyhow here are the pics enjoy.

Ah! You werent asking about welding the cage directly to the beacon. (At least thats what I thought you were doing)
I missed the part in your post about welding feet on it.


Nice work.

A chrome plating is first cooper, than nickel, than chrome. These material normally do no harm to the steel for the mig wire is also cooper plated to prevent from rusting, however very thin.
The problem is the material underneeth these lays. A shopping cart is usually made from cheep material and the wires are contact welded (simelar process to spot welding of a car body). The poor quallity of that material might cause problems due to sulfor and phosphor content.
But it seems you succeeded.
Wolf

Wolf.Dose said:

A chrome plating is first cooper, than nickel, than chrome. These material normally do no harm to the steel for the mig wire is also cooper plated to prevent from rusting, however very thin.
The problem is the material underneeth these lays. A shopping cart is usually made from cheep material and the wires are contact welded (simelar process to spot welding of a car body). The poor quallity of that material might cause problems due to sulfor and phosphor content.
But it seems you succeeded.
Wolf

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Yeah I got the welds to take. The biggest issue that I had was getting the temp low enough. There was some trial and error with that. I burned right through some scrap pieces of that stuff that I used to practice with. I wound up having to set my millermatic 211 to the lowest setting in order to weld the finner cage material to the heavier bent rods.