Is this an acceptable process?
- posted
12 years ago
Is this an acceptable process?
Friction stir welding is a well-accepted process used to make axles and driveshafts on auto parts. It may be a bit rough on standard lathes, but the machines built for the purpose take it day in and day out.
Jon
I thing the friction welder stopped as it was programmed to stop, not that it was stalled by the workpiece. That machine is not a lathe, despite the chuck. It appears to be a direct drive friction welder.
Joe Gwinn
Joseph Gwinn fired this volley in news:joegwinn- snipped-for-privacy@news.giganews.com:
Who _didn't_ hear the contactor cut out when the weld was finished?
That was not a stall; no, not at all.
LLoyd
Friction stir welding is a different process. It uses a tool akin to a router to force a smooth bit along a flat butt joint between two aluminum sheets effectively stirring the two sheets together. Used in aerospace and similar work.
Yes, a company I worked for had a friction welding division and that's how they did it.
The machine is not a lathe. The headstock is similar, the tail stock pushes one half of the piece under enormous pressure against the other half. The weld slag at the junction can be a bitch to remove.
David
"David R. Birch" fired this volley in news: snipped-for-privacy@news3.newsguy.com:
"Slag" is a product of fluxes. Did they flux the joints?
LLoyd
As somebody else said, it's not a lathe. It's supposed to do that.
Another common use of this method is welding the exhaust turbines onto turbocharger shafts. I looked a bit for some good videos of that but didn't see any. The newer machines are a lot more protected, you can't see much happening.... ten years ago, the older ones were quite a bit more 'open" and lathe-like.
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Can you do friction-welding on a regular lathe? Even of just two very tiny parts? This would be more of a "stupid shop trick" more than anything useful, but I do wonder.....
That is a very limited definition of slag. AFAIK, no flux used.
David
"David R. Birch" fired this volley in news: snipped-for-privacy@news6.newsguy.com:
Noooo.... The stuff that flakes on the surface from over-heating is "scale", not "slag". Slag is non-metal stuff -- from flux.
LLoyd
I did friction welding on my 10EE. It was a part to hold roll of PLU stickers. Or that little sticker you see on every apple.
I tried a butt weld. That didn't work. Then I put a slight taper on both the disk and arbor. This welded in a second. two very small parts that would have been damn near impossible to TIG weld perfectly square.
Karl
I think it looked reasonable giving the violence of the process.
I remember reading about friction welding in my metal shop textbook in the late '70's. That book claimed that it was done by spinning up one part and letting the momentum of the spinning part make the weld -- I take it that now it's done by humongous motors.
You can argue with my dictionary, which gives the first definition of slag as "the dross or scoria of a metal".
David
I saw a 70's training video where the bearing cups for bicycle hubs were being welded onto the central tube. Took much less than a second per unit. Very neat.
Here is an example of stir welding performed on pipe.
"David R. Birch" fired this volley in news:j29vda01oj2 @news6.newsguy.com:
Such dross shows up in the smelt. Finished metallurgical alloys scale slightly when heated to welding temperatures. Slag does not form except in the situation where lots of impurities are present -- such as a welding flux.
This is a metal-working sig. Common use in a field often does not match what Webster's might say is common use among the populace.
LLoyd
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