Magnetic Impelled Arc Butt Welding (MIAB)

Magnetic Impelled Arc Butt welding or MIAB welding is used to weld tubular components made from ferrous metals. (photo courtesy KUKA). The process has several advantages compared to other competing technologies mainly:

- High Welding Speeds
- Small bead and low distortion compared to friction welding or arc welding
- Relatively small forging forces compared to friction welding
- No moving parts or moving arc by magnetic field around the tube

The process has niche application and hence there are not too many equipment makers. The major supplier is KUKA and another smaller supplier is Diverse. See equipment details. One of the knocks on this process is high initial investment for equipment.

If you are looking to weld tubular parts made from steel, check this process out.

Internet Advertising up 15.2% in 2008 - How does this affect Welding Businesses?

Internet advertising is up by 15% in the first six months of 2008.
To view the complete report http://www.iab.net/media/file/IAB_PWC_2008_6m.pdf

If you are in the welding business, how does this affect you? Obviously times are tough right now and advertising budgets are under pressue. To get the most value for your money you should be looking for the best ROI (Return on Investment) in advertising.

Small businesses and large should be looking for ways to advertise online and look for welding industry websites that are serving the community. Advertising either placing Text Links or Banner Ads are common methods to bring in traffic to your website. Websites are selling their ad space for such advertising (WeldingJobs.com). Also, you can look at Google Adwords where you could target specific keywords that are relevant to your welding business. Google would place your text and banner ads on welding related websites and you pay for every click on your ad.

The time is now, for advertising online if you haven't done it yet. Here are some additional information.

Find out how much a clik costs on Google Adwords for welding related keywords..
https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox

Use welding related keywords and find trends in search
http://www.google.com/trends

Welding business involved in welding supplies, welding equipment or any welding related business looking at ways at improving their online presence or increase online customers, feel free to contact me for solutions. Sastha.com

Welding in Battery Mfg. - Nimh (Nickel Metal Hydride)

Batteries for electric cars or hybrid vehicles are a hot field right now due to the global fuel issues. What should be interesting for folks is that there is a heck a lot welding in batteries.




I had the opportunity to work on Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMh)battery manufacturing and was involved in developing and implementing some of the welding processes. The materials involved are exotic such as Nickel foam, Nickel Wire Mesh, Copper and welding becomes a challenge due to the sheer limitations of the components involved.

How do you weld Nickel sheet electrodes to Nickel Foam (spongy) using resistance welding? Typical resistance welding (AC) works quite well except its a challenge to ensure contact between tips and parts. Our goal was to be able to achieve good electrical conductivity and maintain suffient pull and peel strength.

Welding nickel leads to copper terminals in the battery was challenging until laser welding came about. The leads were quite thick and the laser was the best option to get enough penetration and produce a weld with the copper terminal. Ni and Cu do not produce any intermetallics and hence the welds very sound.

In short, the sheer volume of electrodes in a battery cell is large and it is an interesting challege for welding engineers.

Magnetic Pulse Welding (MPW)

(Coutesy from Pulsar.co.il)

During my years as an advanced technology engineer, had the opportunity to work on magnetic pulse welding development. We were doing a thorough research on this technology to understand its capabilities and limitations for tubular applications.

Magnetic Pulse Welding is very similar to Magnetic Pulse Forming, expect the process occurs much quicker in welding. Forming is typically in hundreds of microseconds versus welding is in tens of microseconds and this is the challenge for equipment makers. Forming has been done and there are a few equipment makers for large aluminum tubular components but welding is still a relatively new area. The limitation is the equipment, coil design and the ability to handle large currents through cable connections.


Magnetic Pulse Welding technology can also be applied for dissimilar metals such as aluminum to steel and we were succesful in testing such components. However, when you weld dissimilar metals, there is always the issue of galvanic corrosion and intermetallics that you need to pay attention to that could affect structural properties depending on the application.

Here are some websites with more information:

MPW Research

Pulsar, Israel

Maxwell Magneform, USA

What's new in Welding?

I have been in welding engineering for a while but also have been out of it for the last few years. We know there are new developments all the time in Arc Weldiing, Spot Welding and Laser Welding.

Specifically, Laser Welding has been a very hot field (pardon the pun) with a lot of new activities such as Diode Lasers, Fiber Lasers and Laser/MIG hybrids etc. Diode lasers were very interesting but the power density was not quite there to handle welding. Fiber lasers were very attractive due to small package but again the power density was still a question.

Check out these laser sites for more information.
Trumpf.com
Rofin Sinar
Fraunhofer USA

Post your comments if you are using lasers in welding. We would like to know.