Rotary Friction Welding

For your complex joining requirements, our Rotary Friction Welding solutions offer a flexible option. We are the only company offering all three types of rotary friction welding technologies – inertia, direct drive, and hybrid. Here are some reasons why this helps you:

• Unique welding capabilities
  Rotary Friction Welding creates a 100-percent bond of the contact area – such as a full-section weld around a diameter on the OD or ID of a tube – creating joints of forged quality. The weld properties are superior to welds created with fusion processes, such as MIG or TIG welding. This results in a higher strength bond and greatly increased design flexibility of part.

• Minimal joint preparation
  Joint preparation is minimal for the Rotary Friction Welding process. Machined, saw-cut, and even sheared surfaces are weldable. It also creates a narrow heat-affected zone, resulting in more uniform properties throughout the part, higher joint efficiencies, and stronger welds.

• Ecologically friendly and energy efficient
  Rotary Friction Welding is an environmentally friendly process that requires no consumables, flux, filler material, or shielding gases to run. Plus, there’s no weld splatter. It’s also energy efficient because it uses the least energy consumption of all welding processes.

• Material & Production Efficiency
  Since a friction weld is stronger than other conventional welds, it requires less raw materials to achieve the same torque and fatigue characteristics of the conventional part. This means a reduction in both raw material costs and the post-welding machining time required to remove the extra material.

• Faster Weld Cycles
  Weld Cycle production times can be reduced, meaning that more parts can be joined in less time, since the friction welding process is significantly faster than more conventional methods of welding. Many rotary friction welds are accomplished in mere seconds.

• Reduced Inventory to Create Part Families
  An extensive inventory of forged part families can be replaced using fewer and less expensive friction welded common components. Unique single forgings can be replaced with less expensive and commonly stocked components such as tubes, plates, and bar stock to accommodate the product range of sizes. For more details, please see our hydraulic piston rod example here

• Machine Controlled Process
  The machine-controlled friction weld process is consistent and repetitive, eliminating human error while producing weld quality that is independent of an operator’s skill level. The process parameters are easily controlled, repeatable, and monitored, allowing for real-time and statistical monitoring of the parameters.

• Join Dissimilar Materials to Reduce Material Costs
  Metal combinations not normally considered compatible using conventional welding methods can be joined by friction welding, such as aluminum to steel, copper to aluminum, titanium to copper, and nickel alloys to steel. This creates significant cost savings because engineers can design bimetallic parts that use expensive materials only where needed. Industries like automotive and aerospace will friction-weld dissimilar materials as a way of light weighting components for their applications.