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I Forge Iron

The power of friction


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We welded millions of flanged valves this way at the Henry Vogt Machine Co. We welded on the steam flanges. Our process was called Inertial welding, as the process was controlled by a flywheel. Chuck the flange in the flywheel chuck, place the valve body on a fixed chuck. The flywheel was spun up to a set rpm, and then the drive disengaged. The body was thrust into the spinning flange at a set pressure and when the rpm dropped to a lower set point the thrust was increased to push out a "Curl" that had the surface scale etc. At some point the weld went solid and the flywheel stopped, weld complete. Spin the body around place the second flange and hit the start.
A full penetration weld for an ASME code rated weld took much time and a highly skilled welder. Maybe 4 valve bodies completed in an hour. The longest cycle time was 90 seconds finished body to finished body. The first quality check was when th part was dropped in the tub, the flanges either were perfectly welded or fell off!
The heat affected zone was very hard to see when etched as there was no filler metal, and every body was stress releieved in a furnace anyway.
We did ultra sonic testing of every weld for many years but dropped it as we never found defects. We did do a hydro shell test at 1.5 the cold working pressure. I looked at every returned valve for the 21 years I worked there, and never saw a single defective weld, and never heard of one at either ultrasonic or hydro test. We did stick weld a few odd ball valves and the Nuclear code stamped valves and while this was about 2% of all the flanges welded I did see some defects there.

Many automotive parts are friction welded, the spindles are welded onto the dif housing on most large truck rear ends, some large truck axles have the flange friction welded on and many many other parts as well. Exhaust valves that are sodium filled are friction welded to put the large end on the shank.

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At the ABANA conference in Rapid City, the School of Mines gave a demonstration of their Friction Stir welder at the campus. It is AMAZING to say the least. They could weld with not distortion. Weld Aluminum to Steel, Plastic to Aluminum...it is amazing technology. It was well worth the time of the tour.

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I have seen that stir welder, awsome machine, I think it sells for around $20 million. Some of the bits it uses are $6000 each or more. They also have a process where using a laser and powdered metal they can put an M-4 edge 1/4 inch wide on a piece of mild steel. They got some really neat toys at the School that's why I help mentor their Blacksmith Club I get to see some really neat stuff at times. :D

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