A Cooler Weld

This article provides details of a low-temperature joining technology called friction stir welding. Friction stir welding (FSW) uses a cylindrical, shouldered tool with a profiled pin that is rotated and slowly plunged into the joint line between two pieces of sheet or plate material. According to an engineer, stir welding eliminated 60 percent of the rivets that the plane would have otherwise required. Eclipse Aviation Corp., Albuquerque, NM, is building a separate plant to house its stir welding operations for commercial production, once its plane receives certification by the US Federal Aviation Administration. FSW is a solid-state process, more like forging and extruding than to fusion welding. Since the process is solid state, the joint is not subject to any shrinkage because of phase changes. The process also introduces minimal heat into the weld, so the heat-affected zone is relatively small in comparison to arc welding.