Finaly you can weld aluminum to steel

If it sounds too good to be true....

A flame that burns at only 259 - 279 degrees F, but suddenly ramps up to as high as 6000 degrees when it contacts material? Flame that produces no UV? OK, but what about that 6000 degree metal? A flame that adjusts its temperature to the material it's applied to?

Run that by me again: I need another shot at it.

Got any cold fusion home power plants? That'd keep electricity costs down too.

I wouldn't mind being proved wrong, but this sure sounds like snake oil to me.

"Gone with the wind" already at 5:12 East Coast time.

Jeff

I used to build guided missile frigates for the US Navy back in the '70s. Those had a steel hull and aluminum superstructure and no, it wasn't bolted on! We used 2x2" bars which were half aluminum and half steel. The bottom was of course welded to the hull (deck, really) and the top welded to the superstructure. They told us those bars were made by "explosion welding" the aluminum and steel together. So I know aluminum and steel can be welded together. For all I know such explosion-welded bars are available on the market and available for mere guys like us to use in our home designs. And wouldn't *that* be cool ..

(google)

Ah. These guys apparently are a vendor, although you'd have to contact them:

See

GWE

That bar is called "Transition Bar". It's so expensive that the local boat yard on Whidbey saves chunks that are about 1.375 x 2.5 ". My son, who works at the yard, smuggled out some pieces for me. If you look at the cut sides carefully you can see waves at the interface. The waves are larger in one direction than the other. Some of the waves even curl over trapping steel in the aluminum and vice-versa. One place that makes it is on the Olympic Peninsula in WA. Google explosive welding and you should be able to find their website. The waves are controllable. The height, curl, wavelength, etc. are all able to be controlled depending on the desired results. The aluminum to steel transition bar has the waves that curl so much for a good mechanical bond. Part of the reason for this bond is keeping water out of the interface. Any that does get in can cause corrosion pretty fast. ERS

That explains a piece of metal I have laying around here, somewhere. It obviously consists of two metals explosion welded together, but I could never figure out what it would be used for. Now I know. Thanks, Grant.

I'll see if I can dig it out for show and tell. It's a hefty piece, about 3/4" X 2-1/2" X 2'

Regards,

Orrin

I've used a couple of stainless steel - aluminum transitions from

in the past. They explosively bond the ss to aluminum using a copper interlayer. Looks cool from the edge - the copper winds up kind of "wavy" from the propagating shock wave. They specialize in uhv vacuum components, not general structural stuff, but the web site has a lot of useful info.

-- Regards, Carl Ijames carl.ijames at verizon.net

Earlier this year, I saw a perfect weld job of an steel fitting to an aluminum fuel tank.

The weld was made on a Fuller-Hammond aircraft... some time in the

30's!