In this MTI Whiteboard Wednesdays: Low Force and No Interior Flash video, we explain how Low Force Friction Welding helps address one of the most common challenges in welded part design: managing flash within the component. Traditional friction welding can create interior flash depending on part geometry, material flow, and joint design. With Low Force Friction Welding, MTI can help reduce force, flash, and cycle time while still producing strong, repeatable solid-state joints.
You’ll learn how this process can support applications where internal flash removal is difficult or impractical, why it matters for part performance, and how Low Force technology gives manufacturers another option when evaluating friction welding for production.
Consult with us today to learn more about how Low Force Friction Welding can help your project.
Thanks for joining me for MTI’s Whiteboard Wednesdays. I’m Dan Adams. Today, we’re talking about Low Force Friction Welding and the benefits of no interior flash. Today, we’re going to talk about Low Force Friction Welding and generating no interior flash.
So in previous episodes, we talked about the ability to manipulate the flash formation and some of the benefits of low-upset welds, and in minimizing the flash. Today, we want to talk about a couple examples of how this might benefit our customers.
So the first one is in linear friction welding; the traditional application for linear friction welding is titanium blisks. We’re welding a blade to a disc or a bladed disc, so when we do this in titanium, we get a ribbon of flash that forms that is very jagged, and it uses up some of the tooling space that we have. The blade spacing has to be accommodated so that we don’t hit the tooling on the flash of the weld that was just generated before.
At the end of this, we actually got to be able to put the last blade in here, so you have blades on either side. This can be a real challenge; it’s also very challenging in the flash removal operation after welding.
This flash ribbon is shown here on this coupon weld. It’s very rigid, and it’s very sharp. That’s the part that makes it very difficult to remove. If we contrast that with Low Force Friction Welding, we’re going to get a bulge very similar to what we’ve seen before. But that bulge, even though I’m generating plenty of upset and cleaning the weld interface and expelling any contaminants, that bulge is now contained in the same footprint as the weld collar. It makes it much easier to a machine afterward, it doesn’t impinge on the blade spacing. I can get more blades in a tighter space if I want to, so there are more applications within the compressor that I can weld.
And if we look at a Low Force friction weld of titanium, you can see what this bulge looks like from a flash geometry standpoint and how it would be much easier to machine after welding.
On the rotary side, we’re going to talk about welding of pipes or tubes. Certain applications might be rock drilling, it might be water drill pipe, it might be oil drill pipe, hydraulic cylinder bodies, where we need to remove the ID flash. And you can see the ID flash associated with a traditional friction weld, and then one, if we need to generate the amount of upset, you can see it in Low Force.
But this is a very difficult flash to remove on the ID of a tube. This might be bottle boring, it might be gas lancing, it might be milling, it might be shearing, it might be turning, very difficult operation to do.
Whereas, it becomes a little bit more simple if we’re looking at a Low Force weld, or we’ve made applications where there is no ID flash. We’ve been able to form the OD flash only in a Low Force weld, very low upset weld, but now we have no ID flash. So there’s no ID flash removal operation for our customers after welding. This removes a whole piece of equipment from the production line, creating substantial value for the user of Low Force Friction Welding compared to traditional friction welding.
Thank you for joining us for this episode of MTI’s Whiteboard Wednesdays. For more information on this topic or other friction welding solutions, please visit our website at mtiwelding.com