Join a wide variety of materials with friction welding.
There are several benefits to utilising KUKA’s subcontract friction welding facility: established and proven expertise; utilisation of the Thompson friction welding machinery; no need to invest in capital equipment; multiple component manufacture across numerous sectors; a range of geometries and material combinations that can be joined; plus material, geometry, metallurgy and pre and post weld processing advice.
Component manufacture is an important element within the supply chain and for consumers, understanding exactly where those components are made is an integral part of the purchasing process, and several factors will influence why a customer decides upon a supplier; product integrity, cost, availability, proven manufacturing process and reputation.
Rotary friction welding is suitable for an immeasurable number of applications where it is possible to join two components by oscillation.
In the case of bi-metallic, copper-aluminium connectors, there is no other viable method of joining these two materials directly to each other due to the difficulty presented by them having very different thermal expansion coefficients. Low-cost aluminium is joined directly to high-cost copper. Other than the obvious benefit of cost reduction by limiting the use of expensive oxygen-free, high conductivity copper material, reducing direct costs, and waste, aluminium is the optimum mating material which does not impede conductivity and is useful for ease of crimping to electrical cabling. The electrical connector market for power distribution and rail is a significant market to benefit from these solid-state bonding processes.
Other industries that specify friction welding as their standard bonding method include the automotive sector producing axles, cv joints, turbochargers, airbag canisters and other such safety-critical components. The construction and yellow goods industry uses friction welding to manufacture piston rods and hydraulic cylinders where large diameter high-quality steel chromed rods are joined to eyes, yolks, and pinions for heavy-duty industrial service. The aerospace industry has also been known to utilise the processes for manufacturing high integrity components.
Mining, oil and gas industries manufacture drill pipes and rods for deep hole water boring, directional drilling, rock drilling and oil & gas (sour) service applications whereby the integrity of the joint is paramount as it can be performed under the harshest of conditions and under extreme compressive and torsional loads or percussive forces. The cost of failure in these components can cost the operators millions of pounds in lost revenues. The integrity of the friction welded bond is so superior to other joining processes that most world-renowned OEMs across these industries own and operate their own friction welding equipment to produce their safety-critical components in-house.
Cryogenic applications also benefit from the processes’ ability to join dissimilar materials. For instance, stainless steel to copper and interlayered transition joints consisting of stainless steel welded to titanium by using an aluminium alloy interlayer to facilitate the bond between the stainless steel and titanium, which is not suitable for direct bonding. Joints manufactured for this industry sector perform in very low-temperature environments. Again, this is a unique benefit of the processes, that these very dissimilar materials can successfully be directly bonded and operate in very demanding environments.
Friction welding has also proved very successful for welding tools, such as drill bits, for example. Stronger than conventional welding, friction welded drill tools have an enhanced join integrity, as the weld is as strong as the parent material. This is vital for drill tools as they are commonly used at high speed, so the weld must be strong enough to withstand dynamic stresses endured during drilling.
Friction welding has been used in the printing roller industry, decreasing production time and reducing product weight. This method allows the machining time on endcaps to be reduced, and eliminates the need for weld preparation, further decreasing production time.
Whatever the sector or application in which the component shall be utilised, friction welded products have proven to have enhanced structural integrity.
KUKA’s on-site metallurgical lab employs a team of industrial engineers and scientists to serve companies that manufacture products containing various metal components. The company is the UK’s only subcontract friction welding facility to deliver metallurgical investigations to clients across a broad range of industries for material selection, pre and post weld recommendations, inspection, analysis & reporting and testing of materials and bonded components, even if it is not managing their subcontract friction welding project.
A host of additional pre and post weld services are also available, such as:
- Pre-washing – Pre-wash certain components within its industrial cleaning machine to remove greases/oils and other possible contaminants.
- Weld testing and validation – Full destructive and non-destructive testing to welding standards.
- Post weld heat treatment – Heat treatment or stress relief of components following welding.
The friction welding process affords many advantages compared to competing manufacturing processes, such as fusion welding, structural integrity being the most obvious. The benefits are substantial, and when a customer partners with KUKA, it will be assured of an end-to-end subcontract friction welding service.
When considering their production joining and manufacturing processes, engineers and manufacturers ask, “can we do this better, cheaper and more efficiently?”
The answer is ‘yes’, and the solution lies in subcontract friction welding, for those instances where a manufacturer might not have the means to invest in capital equipment. But when welding engineers, welding production supervisors or operations managers require a machine, on-premise, from which they can deliver rotary friction welding in house, to whom do they turn?
In addition to our subcontract friction welding capabilities, KUKA’s Hereward Rise facility is also the manufacturing epicentre of the iconic Thompson Friction Welding machine. Thompson friction welding machines have delivered rotary friction welding or industrial metallurgical joining for more than 50 years. A pioneer in the field of friction welding renowned the world over, the Thompson machine, the brand itself now an integral part of KUKA’s industrial portfolio, is steeped in history and firmly embedded in the industrial heritage of The Black Country; the knowledge and expertise, accumulated across a generation, have been preserved and are applied to the design, build and delivery of a comprehensive and robust range of friction welding machines that, to this day are held in high esteem across many industry sectors, such as oil and gas, automotive, agriculture and power generation.
