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3396 |
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Monday, September 16, 2013, Hall Europa 2:00 PM Session 2: Friction Stir Welding and Resistance Welding |
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Efficient production of large components using a novel 3D FSW head |
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Thomas Weinberger* / Stirzone GmbH, Austria Gunter Figner / Stirzone GmbH, Austria Peter Freigassner/ HAGE Sondermaschinenbau GmbH, Austria Stefan Hampel/ HAGE Sondermaschinenbau GmbH, Austria Florian Hampel/ HAGE Sondermaschinenbau GmbH, Austria |
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Friction stir welding (FSW), is considered to be the most significant development in metal joining in decades and, in addition, is a "green" technology due to its energy efficiency, environmental friendliness, and versatility. The process is already used by many industrial companies. Potentials are given in the areas of automotive, aircraft manufacturing, shipbuilding, fuel tanks, trains, etc. In most instances in the large-scale production products have to run through different processing steps: e. g. milling, drilling, welding, and so on. The specific requirements of each technique cause own machines for each processing step. Therefore the time to setup the parts for the processing steps and also between the processing steps is relatively high. This leads to a long total production time and high costs per part. Additionally, there are also many quality issues, e.g. the change of the reference system may lead to errors in the final product. Within this paper, a novel developed machining head for production of large components is presented and the advantages during the production of a large component is shown. The new developed combined production machine is able to weld 15mm aluminum sheets in one pass, plus high-precision metal cutting operations (e.g. milling - up to 15.000 rpm spindle speed). Additional axes of the welding head ensure the machining of 3D contours. A sophisticated tool changing system enables the change of different tools without break. An online quality management system balances tolerances of the welded plates on the one hand with a laser seam tracking system, and on the other hand with new developed routines in the controlling system. This novel hydride production machine combines FSW and metal cutting operations in the same clamping device and reference system, leading to shorter nonproductive time and higher quality of the product. |