Detailed Guide About Friction Stir Welding Heat Sink

Friction Stir Welding or FSW is a solid phase joining process which uses a non-consumable system of mechanical forces and friction heat without melting the materials.

Heat is usually generated between workpiece materials and the rotating tool by friction, which pushes a softened region close to the FSW tool. Meanwhile the tool is traversed usually along the joint line and with mechanical forces it intermixes the metal pieces. It forges the softened metal and hot metal through mechanical pressure that is applied by the tool, like joining clay and dough.

It is basically used in extruded or wrought aluminum  and for those structures which need high weld strength. Friction Stir Welding is capable of joining copper alloy, aluminum alloy, titanium alloys, stainless steel alloy, magnesium alloys, and mild steel alloy. Recently it has remained successful in the welding of polymers. Moreover, in dissimilar joining metals such as magnesium to steel alloy achieved by friction Stir Welding.

In the early days, friction stir welding was used for the welding of profile heat sinks, because the profile had a specific size limit, and high-power parts that require large heat sinks to support and promote heat dissipation, but now welding has become an inevitable choice for everyone. Now in the field of new energy, the use of friction stir welding has become very common in photovoltaic inverters, in wind energy converters, in electric vehicle controllers, etc.

Let's discuss friction stir welding in detail, its applications, benefits along with functions.

Advantages of Friction Stir Welding

Plenty of advantages of friction stir welding have been found over traditional fusion welding. These are the following…

●Good mechanical properties of FSW in the as-welded condition.

●Improved safety owing to the absence of toxic fumes and the spatter of the molten material.

●No consumables — A threaded pin that is made of conventional tool steel, e.g., hardened H13, that can weld over 1 km (0.62 mi) of aluminum, and interestingly no filler and gas shield is required for the process of aluminum.

●Easily automated and adjustable on simple milling machines — cheap setup costs and minimum training.

●You can operate in all positions (horizontal, vertical, etc.), because there is no weld pool.

●Generally good and superb weld appearance and minimal or low thickness under over-matching, as a result reducing the need for cost and expensive machining after welding.

●Can use thinner materials with the same joint strength.

●Low environmental impact.

●General performance plus cost benefits of switching from fusion to friction.

●The microstructure of the welded joints placed in the heat-affected zone changes little. And the residual stress is quite low, and welding parts are not easy to deformation.

●It can complete the welding of the long welding seam, and large cross sections, joints, and different positions in one time. High joint capacity.

●The operation process is very easy to achieve mechanization and automation, just with simple equipment, low energy consumption required and high efficiency and low requirements on the operating environment.

● No need to insert welding wire, no need to remove or reduce oxidation film before welding aluminum alloy, no need to protect gas and low cost.

●Weldable materials along with heat crack sensitivity and suitable for welding of heterogeneous materials too.

●The friction stir welding process is very safe, pollution-free, plus smoke-free and radiation-free.

How Friction Stir Welding Technology Accomplish?

Friction Stir Welding is usually achieved with four steps and these steps are as follows…

1.Transformation of mechanical energy into thermal energy.

2. Plastic deformation of the material.

3. The setting pressure of it under thermoplastic phenomenon.

4. Molecular diffusion and recrystallization.

Applications industries

●Cooling solutions for the electric car controllers.

●Usage in Power battery pack cooling solution.

●Motor housing cooling solution.

●Inverter cooling solution.

●Power quality SVG cooling solution.

●IT telecommunication cooling solution.

●Shipbuilding and offshore

●Aerospace: Friction Stir Welding is usually used in Space Shuttle external tanks, Orion Crew Vehicle, floor panels of military aircraft are now designed with friction stir welding. It is also used in gantry production machines.

●Automotive: now boot lid of the Toyota Prius and Wheels designed with friction stir welded, rear doors of the Mazda, and usually used for the bonnet.

●Fabrication: vacuum vessels and valves are now designed with FSW, encapsulation of nuclear waste, also used in ship propellers at Friction Stir Link along with hunting knives.

●Railway: roof panels, Curved side, are designed by using friction stir welding, and heat sinks are designed for cooling high-power electronics.

●Personal computers: Apple used friction stir welding in its mac devices to join the bottom with the back of the device.

●Robotics: KUKA Robot Group  has launched friction stir welding in their products in 2012.

●Joining of Aluminum 3D Printing Material: it is also used to join the metal 3D printing materials, used to produce sound and defect-free weld, rotation of probe, spindle tilt angle, target depth, and traverse speed are interesting usage.

Why Choose Winshare Thermal?

We are an emerging leader in the field of thermal solutions and offer a wide range of custom and standardized heat sink, assemblies, heat pipes, and fan hardware assemblies according to your specifications.

We know increasing power electronics need thermal designs that way we provide custom and standardized heat sinks. To brief our engineers used 3d molding in their designing process.

We consider CFD techniques to optimize your project by utilizing cutting edges. We believe in quality but we care for our dear customers and clients and design quality products at low manufacturing cost.

Be it CNC parts, prototype, heat sink, cold plates, our labs fully inspect your ideas and provide the final version in outstanding quality. Whether you want heatsink, CNC parts, cold plates, friction stir welding, we will be glad to help you.

Give us a chance to make your project's goals successful everytime and from everywhere and will meet even if you give us a tight timeline. Contact us today for the best quote.

If you still find any confusion, just comment in the comments section and we will turn back to solve your queries. Happy reading!