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