Comments on: Friction Stir Welding

By: Chris Gagnon

Chris Gagnon — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 21:47:35 +0000

My favorite toy from youth(I’m 46), was the “Spinwelder” It was a plastic gun with a dc motor in it, and you used little white plastic rods that attached to the gun to weld black I-beam shaped plastic pieces together. It was like a plastic erector set, but welded.

By: Adam K

Adam K — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 14:17:25 +0000

The place I work has the largest FSW in the world. They welded two chunks of 2 inch thick aluminum together the other day.

By: Tim H

Tim H — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 19:49:33 +0000

We built the FSW machine shown in the photo. for more info on FSW go to mtiwelding.com and click the “friction stir” tab.

By: Bill

Bill — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 16:16:23 +0000

AIUI The important point is that, unlike conventional friction welding, the metal is NOT melted. The stirring process does heat the metal but does not allow it to melt and reform crystals that would weaken the joint.

Bill

By: Robotic

Robotic — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 18:09:36 +0000

This is NOT Friction Welding.
FSW does not ever melt metal. Between the pre-heating by the tool’s shoulder and the pressure involved, the material is plastically removed from the leading edge of the tool and deposited in the wake. It’s basically ‘wiping’ the aluminum from the front and leaving it behind.
Jigging and tooling is critical and so only certain applications are possible.
Also, the resulting weld metal has material properties similar to ‘as cast’, so the joint design (and material selection) must take that into account. For example, on the Space Shuttle main tank the plates are made thicker where they will be joined by FSW.

BS WE OSU 2000 (Go Bucks!)