Editor’s Note: As many Light Metal Age articles and items have noted, the friction stir welding (FSW) process, which joins aluminum components in the solid state, has been applied throughout the world in various industries that produce products for transportation, B&C, and industrial and consumer sectors. The November 2020 selection of patents covered a wide […]
welding
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Resistance spot welding (RSW), a technology that’s at least 100 years old, has been used by the automotive industry almost exclusively for joining steel sheet without using filler material or flux. The process utilizes shaped copper alloy electrodes, typically water cooled, to apply heat and pressure to pass electric current through stacked up sheets to […]
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Editor’s Note: As many articles have appeared in Light Metal Age (both in the magazine and online) describing and following the friction stir welding (FSW) process, especially its application in joining aluminum alloys in various forms and tempers, readers should be familiar with its advantages. In the FSW process, aluminum components are joined in the solid […]
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Posted in:
October 2020
Cover Automakers are moving deeper into the development of electric vehicles. For example, for the first time ever Ford introduced a one-off Mustang Cobra Jet factory drag racer with all-electric propulsion in order to demonstrate the capabilities of electric powertrains. This is one of several models the company has developed with electric and hybrid electric […]
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Experienced welders will tell you that, compared to welding steel, welding aluminum and its alloys is not difficult but different. Steel, being one of the common construction materials, most welders and myself included started by learning how to weld steel. As aluminum has especially gained market share in transportation, welding aluminum is challenged in various […]
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Lightweighting has been and continues to be a major concern for the aerospace, automotive, and transportation industries. Whether it’s an airplane, automobile, boat, or train, the use of lightweight materials, such as aluminum, provide significant fuel savings and performance benefits. Like its competitors in the lightweighting arena (steel, composites, etc.), aluminum is working to continually […]
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FABTECH 2019, North America’s largest metal forming, fabricating, welding, and finishing, was held on November 11-14 in Chicago, Illinois. The event achieved record attendance, with a total of 48,278 attendees from 95 countries over the course of four days. During FABTECH, Light Metal Age spoke with Prof. Xiaochun Li, founder of MetaLi, about the company’s groundbreaking […]
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The Materials Testing Institute at the University of Stuttgart has developed a process, based on friction stir welding (FSW), for the high-strength welding of aluminum and steel plates. The plates can have different thicknesses and the seam is so stable that the hybrid plates can even be deep drawn. This enables lightweight yet sturdy hybrid […]
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The demand for lighter automobile bodies in order to provide improved fuel efficiency and reduced CO2emissions has increased in recent years, and various types of aluminum alloys are now being used for automobile parts in an increasingly broad range of ways. Furukawa Electric Co., Ltd. in Japan developed a new fiber laser welding technology said to address […]