Welding Tips and Tricks

Here's a very novel way of welding two parts together.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JbnDXw-0pM

...and just when I thought that 'Induction Welding' was cool,
this method seems a lot more efficient for what it has to do.
Could this be a modern method of pipe welding? Any thoughts?

Its a real good way to weld two dissimilar metals. Like a hardened nugget on top of a valve stem in an engine or something like that. Im having trouble coming up with more examples. Pipe welding? I dont know about that. First you would need a machine that could hold 2 40 footers at once to line up the ends and then spin the one at a high rate of speed or vibrate it. There are different types of friction welding. Then for the bent sections and elbow in the pipe I would not have any clue how they would get that to work. But I guess they have robotic mig welders for pipelines now so who knows. If you have ever taken a bearing off of a shaft that it spun on or a spindle out of its socket and saw the galling on the shaft this is a very basic form of friction welding. Metal transfer under heat and pressure. If you think this is cool you should youtube search blast welding or blast cladding. Thats really cool.

The place next to my work welds large aluminum panels for government contracts using a related process called "friction stir", where the metal isn't actually melted, but brought to a plastic state and fused with pressure.

Article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friction_stir_welding

Noisy as hell, when that machine is running, but interesting process.

Steve S.

Here's that company's website:

http://www.frictionstirlink.com/

Interestingly, I find no mention of their Slidell, LA facility. Maybe that's because they've had four serious lost-time accidents and a shooting in the last three months?

Steve S.

I bought a 'Hot Air' plastic welder last year to repair my PolyPropylene 'PortaBote'.
http://www.porta-bote.com/

Once the folding boat was repaired, I decided to use the plastic welder for repairing 'Surface Mount' circuit boards.
It seems to work really good. http://www.aliexpress.com/item-img/Plas ... 06134.html

The advantage of a welder like this, is that I can control both the temperature and flow of the hot air. It can also be used to seam plastic sheets together for green houses, portable fabric shelters, etc.

Here's another example of Friction Stir Welding.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNbQH8XBgxQ

That's interesting, I had not heard of that process...

Some of the small rubber tyred (made in England!) Cat back-hoes had their 'eyes' spin-welded on to the ram part of the cylinders. Some of the 950's also, as I recall.

-c-

Hey corn, that's a different gig. This is friction stir welding , the one you speak of is friction inertia welding. FSW is still not widely used, in Australia at least.

Hi WerkSpace,Friction welding (FRW) is a solid-state welding process that generates heat through mechanical friction between a moving workpiece and a stationary component, with the addition of a lateral force called "upset" to plastically displace and fuse the materials. Technically, because no melt occurs, friction welding is not actually a welding process in the traditional sense, but a forging technique. However, due to the similarities between these techniques and traditional welding, the term has become common. Friction welding is used with metals and thermoplastics in a wide variety of aviation and automotive applications.

We use ultrasound welding for the copper tubing all the time. It is very quick, flame less and certified to weld tubing FILLED with flammable substances like isobutane.
The physics is simple. If you for example hammer a piece of metal it will heat up. Ultrasound welder hammers the welded piece 20000-35000 times per second and compressing it at the same time.

http://thermosonics.co.uk/images/storie ... ipment.pdf

I tried to play that video and my dogs freaked out!



Kidding.

Steve S

I was fully expecting to see liquid metal fling off that thing all over the place

On a few occasions I successfully........or was it unsuccessful? Dunno. I wasn't trying. I friction welded pistons to cylinder walls on race snowmobile engines. Once I used mixed gas that had been around too long in a chainsaw. No shielding gas or cleaning needed.

Bill Beauregard wrote:On a few occasions I successfully........or was it unsuccessful? Dunno. I wasn't trying. I friction welded pistons to cylinder walls on race snowmobile engines. Once I used mixed gas that had been around too long in a chainsaw. No shielding gas or cleaning needed.

I bet you didn't need brakes either....

I've seen video of the Mercedes drive shaft manufacturing process, showing them being friction welded when joining the yokes to the tube.

Like a couple of others, I've done some accidental friction welding, usually when a bearing gives up and the shaft inside it keeps spinning!

Hey benty,

Thanks for the google on friction stir.

Are you a real person, interested in participating? Or a "bot", replying with a google answer to promote your website in the signature line?

Please respond.

Steve S

I think Bently is a bot.

The FANUC video shows exactly what we do at work. Only, a different robot. The biggest Heavy Duty FANUC robot can only produce 4000lbs. linear pressure using servo drives. The ones we have can go beyond 15000lbs. linear using hydraulic pumps.

The curved plates in the video are typical as well. This type of weld is only hindered by access of the stir head. If it can reach it, it can weld it.

Don't worry about your jobs, guys. These robots need two man crews to operate. A lead and a second (helper).