I know this sounds a bit strange but here was my thinking. I welded together a frame with square tube (mild steel) that I will powder coat. I do need to have other pieces that I need to assemble / disassemble with the frame so I’ve been using rivet nuts and fasteners which have worked great. I chose stainless steel for the rivet nuts and fasteners because I didn’t want the powder coating to go into the threads and I didn’t want that to rust while the rest of the frame was good from powder coating.
However, I have one location where the rivet nut HAD to go in a very inconvenient place that was the welded seam between two square tube pieces so it partially went through the wall between them as shown here.
I went ahead an put the 6mm rivet nut in and it’s staying in but probably just from friction with the side walls of the hole I drilled because of where it is. I’m thinking I want to put a little bit of weld to lock it in a bit more. It’s not supporting a ton of weight but it’s 1 of 4 that will be holding up probably 30-50 lbs. I know you’re supposed to use stainless filler but I don’t really want to buy a whole spool and get a whole other tank of shielding gas for just this one rivet nut (haven’t had a need for stainless welding yet, otherwise). My thought is the part I would weld will be powder coated anyway.
Does anyone have any advice from those more experienced on what settings to use and what your weld technique would be? It’s in 3/16" thick mild steel square tube, but the rivet nut is a different thickness. Also I don’t want to ruin the threads in the rivet nut so I want to be careful. How would you approach this? Thanks in advance. I really appreciate all the people on here who are willing to share their experience for the less experienced, like me. 