Welding Tips and Tricks

Saw it on tv last night,created for NASA,who would have thought that was even possible,if you haven't seen it,look it up,pretty amazing!

That stuff is crazy.

Fellow member Rocketsurgeon is certified in that, did it at the Michoud assembly plant in New Orleans East. He now works with me, and our next door neighbor is Friction Stir Link, doing this every day building decking for ships on Navy contracts.

Steve S

Otto Nobedder wrote:Fellow member Rocketsurgeon is certified in that, did it at the Michoud assembly plant in New Orleans East. He now works with me, and our next door neighbor is Friction Stir Link, doing this every day building decking for ships on Navy contracts.

Steve S

Hey...Rocket Surgeon welded for NASA didn't he? How'd you get him?

exnailpounder wrote:

Otto Nobedder wrote:Fellow member Rocketsurgeon is certified in that, did it at the Michoud assembly plant in New Orleans East. He now works with me, and our next door neighbor is Friction Stir Link, doing this every day building decking for ships on Navy contracts.

Steve S

Hey...Rocket Surgeon welded for NASA didn't he? How'd you get him?

It was probably the drive that finally pushed him over the edge.

I just can't fathom what advantages this process really has over others. I don't know much about process other than videos and few things a read about it. Only advantages I can see personally is that you don't need shielding gas, no filler, and lower temperature reduces distortion since it doesn't actually melt. However from what I have read about it, its slower, harder to detect defects in weld, leaves hole at end of weld and can't deal with changes in thickness of materials it's welding, it can actually cause distortion of materials due to pressure applied to tool on certain things.

Can someone give an example where this process would be totally superior to other methods for a particular purpose or where this is the only process that can perform a particular weld.

With friction stir, there are no longer "unweldable" alloys.

Also would like to know how you think FS affects the metal such that UT and X-ray have a harder time picking up defects.

Where'd you get "slower"? You should see the 8' X 50' panels, 12 joints wide, than come out of the neighbor's shop every day.


Steve S

For high strength alloys there can be some unacceptable reduction in stress corrosion resistance. The attached link has a paper with a description of the process and some good pictures of the resulting microstructure and the weld zone's susceptibility to corrosion. http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/p015941.pdf

Of course!

There is no perfect process. Each to it's application, and measure the trade-offs when choosing.

Steve S

Otto Nobedder wrote:
Also would like to know how you think FS affects the metal such that UT and X-ray have a harder time picking up defects.

Where'd you get "slower"? You should see the 8' X 50' panels, 12 joints wide, than come out of the neighbor's shop every day.


Steve S

There is a term used for the defects called the "kissing bond defect" if you search this it will bring up several articles that explain it better than I can. I have read several sites and PDFs stating it was slower than other processes also. Again just a Google search with the wording "friction stir welding process slower than others" brings up pdf research articles and sites where it is mentioned it is slower than arc and laser processes.

Like I said earlier don't have on hand experience with this process only from stuff I read about it.