The solid-state, forged-quality bonded joint offered by friction welding has made it an ideal manufacturing process for the automotive industry. With the ability to create highly durable, customized components for everything from commercial to personal-use vehicles, friction welding helps Tier One manufacturers design flexible solutions to ever-changing challenges of the automotive industry.
What makes friction welding essential to automotive suppliers?
Automotive manufacturers have long relied on friction welding for a variety of applications because it lowers production costs while enhancing quality, consistency, and performance. Here’s how friction welding creates value across the manufacturing process:
1. Automated for High Volume Production
Friction welding, and Rotary Friction Welding in particular, allows for high-volume production to help you create parts more efficiently. Our newest joining technology, Low Force Friction Welding, can generate even faster cycle times than what is produced with traditional friction welding. From steering components to camshafts and U-joints, friction welding can accomplish what you need, when you need it. And because friction welding machines may be automated, the technology can be seamlessly integrated into a production cell. This further reduces the overall cycle time to produce the part.
2. Consistency Through Friction Welding Technology
Friction welding machines for automotive critical joints are more reliable than conventional welding techniques, so suppliers don’t have to worry about costly downtime. Machine-made parts are made the same way each time, so friction welded parts are always of the same high quality.
Plus, the automated nature of a friction welding machine takes individual operator skill out of the equation to deliver durable, defect-free parts you can count on, every time. Compared to traditional methods, MTI’s advanced controls for friction welding allow the welded components to achieve better length control and/or radial orientation than ever before. This helps reduce the as-welded tolerances that may drive the requirement for additional manufacturing operations in the production line, ultimately reducing cost. Low Force Friction Welding refines this process even more, offering higher orientation precision.
3. Ability to Join Dissimilar Metals
When you can forge two dissimilar metals together, you have the opportunity to reduce the weight of the final vehicle. The ability to combine aluminum, in particular, with other materials has become a critical aspect of automotive production — and friction welding makes it possible. So whether you’re joining aluminum with copper or steel with low-carbon alloys, the solid-state bond quality you get from welding dissimilar metals is always strong, and always consistent.
4. Proven-effective Manufacturing Technique for the Automotive Industry
Rotary Friction Welding has been used in the industry for decades, for numerous types of parts, including:
- The MTI-developed Monosteel® piston
- Brake calipers
- Transmission input shafts
- Transmission gears
- Turbochargers
- Battery cables
- Axle tubes
- Engine valves
- …and more
With Low Force Friction Welding, the typical part range expands, meaning the list could grow even longer as more applications see benefits from our newest technology.
5. Reliable Process for High-quality Welds
The automotive industry runs on Just-in-Time inventory, where materials or parts are produced or acquired only as demand requires. Suppliers cannot afford the production disruption that comes from machine downtime and must have dependable technology in their production process.
Friction welding in the automotive industry promotes efficient production of error-free welds. Rotary friction welding has been a part of vehicle production for over 40 years and is a proven, reliable process. While newer, Low Force Friction Welding is based on the successes of our traditional friction welding processes and paves the way for additional benefits.
MTI is a Trusted Partner for Friction Welding Solutions
Every day, MTI leverages our engineering expertise to build the best friction welding machines for high-volume automotive production, helping the industry work efficiently and effectively. Through our efforts, we’ve developed a standard range of machines that reduce design costs for conventional parts. Together, we can help you make your parts even better.
Bring us your toughest manufacturing challenges. As one of the world’s leading friction welding machine manufacturers for automotive solutions, we’re ready to help you find a solid solution that leverages the best qualities of friction welding. Find out more about how we’ve served the automotive industry for decades and reach out to see how we can do for you.