Therefore FSW allows, if compared with the laser technology, to avoid any UV emission, smoke, melted drops and spark emission and guarantees a more safe, clean and environmental friendly process.
In terms of final product characteristics, it is possible to obtain joints featuring higher mechanical properties and less distortions as well.
Conceived to mainly process light and copper alloys, the FSW equipment has a 2000*400 mm sized working table, it reaches a maximum joyning speed of about 2m/min and can weld 2D components or frames in the thickness range from 3 mm (copper alloys) up to 10 mm (Al alloys).
As far as the more conventional welding equipments are concerned:
- the GTAW and PAW/GMAW apparata are, respectively, fed by 450 A and 300 A inverter electric generators;
- the GMAW can be installed on the laser working table and controlled by a 6-axis robot;
- PAW and GTAW avail themselves of a 3 meter long working table.
The above conventional technologies available at CSM can manage all kinds of metallic alloys and weld thicknesses.
These ones are also interesting when coupled with lasers, because the results achievable by means of their cooperative work allows to overcome the limits of each of them to attain: higher solder feed rate, multi solders feed and the possibility of jointing with a broad initial gap. In this respect CSM has already gained a remarkable experience.
This large endowement of equipments is completed by the availability of NDT devices to study and qualify both the welding process and its product. Some of them are listed hearafter:
- Industrial radiography (160 KV minifocus, 300 KV minifocus);
- Ultrasonic control pulse echo TOFD;
- Magnetoscopic control;
- Penetrant dye control.