Getec Industries added friction stir welding (FSW) services to its Thermal Solutions division in Torrance, California. The new capabilities will enable the company to supply large extruded aluminum heat sinks to the electronics industries.
“By adding stir welding services to our Thermal Solutions division, Getec Industrial can fabricate extruded aluminum heat sinks as wide as you need,” said Hart Cardozo III, COO of Getec Industries. “This option will substantially cut costs for our customers who require these types of thermal management solutions for their products, and save them a lot of manufacturing lead time and production headaches.”
Complex electronic components manufactured today are able to operate faster than ever. This increased speed generates heat, which often requires innovative solutions for heat dissipation. One solution is to implement large extruded aluminum heat sinks in the electronic devices that are 20 or 30 inches or even larger.
The challenge is that there are a limited number of extrusion presses large enough to extrude the large profiles required for these heat sinks, with only a small number of 20 and 30-inch presses and even fewer 36-inch presses. Furthermore, in order to efficiently use these larger extrusion presses, a production run of 10-20 metric tons is required, and the cost of tooling for a large extrusion press can range anywhere from $40,000–90,000. This makes the extrusion of large, one-piece aluminum heat sinks unaffordable for most businesses.
The FSW process joins two surfaces together using a rotating mechanical tool that fuses the surfaces of two smaller heat sinks together seamlessly. Using this method, Getec Industrial will be able to weld three 12-inch heat sinks together to create one seamless 36-inch heat sink at a fraction of the cost of producing a a single piece 36-inch heat sink. This is an affordable alternative that produces heat dissipation performance of a large heat sink without the prohibitive die tooling and large minimum metric ton runs associated with large extrusion presses.
Getec Industries is the North American division of Getec Industrial, through which is supplies a number of manufacturing services, including aluminum extrusion, die casting, CNC machining, metal stamping, plating and assembly and packaging.