A friction stir welding tool includes a housing and a stir pin. The housing includes a first surface, a housing hole formed in the housing and having a housing hole opening on the first surface, and a discharge hole through which the housing hole is in communication with an outside of the housing. The stir pin includes a pin holder and a pin body. The pin holder has a first end portion and a second end portion. The first end portion is configured to be connected to a rotation spindle. The pin body is provided in the housing hole, is detachably attached to the second end portion, and is rotatable together with the pin holder around the rotation axis. The pin body includes a stir portion that protrudes from the first surface via the housing hole opening.

A method for selecting optimum operation performance criteria for a metal working process. The method includes the step of developing a process model relating process parameters for the operation with performance variables for said operation, wherein the process parameters and performance variables are retrievable via integrated multiple data sources, and selecting at least one optimization technique to define a function, said function including process parameters. Moreover, the method includes generating the function for optimization by using acceptable tolerances of a product to be machined as a basis to define ranges for performance variables along with ranges for process parameters, and applying the at least one optimization technique to said function, whereby optimum operation performance criteria are calculated for the process model including process parameters and performance variables to obtain a set of requirements to be used for controlling the metal working process.

The present invention relates to metalworking, in particular to producing vessels from non-heat-treatable aluminium alloys used for tanks and pressure vessels. Disclosed is a method of manufacturing a vessel, the method including: forming a tube by rolling at least one flat blank and abutting the edges thereof, friction stir welding the abutted edges and working at least a part of the welded tube into a shape of the vessel, wherein the flat blank is a sheet of a non-heat-treatable aluminium alloy preliminarily subjected to cold working with permanent deformation within the range of 0.5-15%, and said working of at least one part of the welded tube is hot working at a temperature of 230-520° C. The technical effect is a reduction in vessel weight, an increase in vessel strength, a uniform vessel strength and a reduction in the number of hot working cycles during manufacturing of the vessel. Further, the method provides reduced metal and time consumption in manufacturing a vessel from a non-heat-treatable aluminium alloy, low payload ratio, increased reliability and longer service life of the vessel produced using the method.

In order to produce a clutch pack (3), clutch plates are cut from an electrical steel strip or sheet, arranged on top of one another to form the clutch pack (3) and connected to one another within the clutch pack (3). The material of the clutch plates is locally plasticised in the edge region via the generation of frictional heat by means of at least one tool (9′), in such a way that the material of at least adjacent clutch plates is mixed with the tool (9′) such that, after the plasticised material has cooled, these clutch plates are integrally connected to one another. The device used for this purpose has at least one punch press and/or at least one receiving means for one or more clutch packs (3). In addition, the device has at least one welding tool that is rotatably driven about its axis and can be moved in a transverse direction to its rotational axis.

The invention relates to a method and a device for the residue-free friction stir welding of workpieces with different thicknesses, having the following method steps: a) two workpieces (6) to be welded are mounted such that the workpieces can be approached by a holding bell (3) for the friction stir welding tool and the drive head (2) thereof, b) after the welding device is started up, a welding pin tip (5) is immersed into the plastified material of the two workpieces (6) to be connected, wherein a welding shoe (4) is used which has a trapezoidal structure that extends in the diagonal direction of the welding shoe (4) for receiving the welding pin tip (5), and a circular opening (14) is mounted in a web with a smoothing surface (13) which has a front edge (12) that is part of a stepped Spahn guide stage (11), c) in order to improve the method, a welding shoe (4) is used in which the stepped Spahn guide stage (11) has material conducting channels on the front edge (12).

A friction stir spot welding method includes a welding step of forming a build-up portion on a workpiece by friction-stirring the workpiece, using a pin and a shoulder, while pressing a surface of the workpiece with an end face of a clamp, and filling a portion of the workpiece being softened in a chamber portion of the clamp by press-fitting at least one of the pin and the shoulder into a plastic flow portion of the workpiece. and the friction stir spot welding method further includes a pressing step of pressing a surface of at least one of a region of the build-up portion, which is frictionally stirred by the shoulder, and an adjacent region of the build-up portion against the end face of the clamp with the pin and the shoulder retracted into an accommodation space.

A connection assembly is provided and includes a first conductor, a second conductor and a friction stir welded connection connecting the first conductor and the second conductor, with the second conductor having a bundle of conductor wires. The friction stir welded connection is provided by a friction stir welding tool having a pin connecting a front side of the second conductor pressed onto the first conductor along a connecting direction between the first conductor and the second conductor.

A method of forming a monolithic aircraft structure having multiple aerodynamic surfaces includes forming a body component to have a body skin defining a body skin outer surface, and a body side wall integrally formed with the body skin and defining a body mating surface, the body skin outer surface providing a first aerodynamic surface. A cover component is formed to have a cover mating surface and a cover outer surface opposite the cover mating surface, the cover outer surface defining a second aerodynamic surface. The body component is positioned relative to the cover component so that the body mating surface engages the cover mating surface. At least portions of the cover mating surface are friction stir welded to the body mating surface to form friction stir welded joints between the body component and the cover component.

A method of forming a stamped part includes forming a tailor welded blank by friction stir welding (FSW) a first blank to a second blank, removing a FSW start spot and a FSW stop spot from the tailor welded blank using a machining process such that a finished tailor welded blank is formed and stamping the finished tailor welded blank into the stamped part such that a weld formed by FSW the first blank to the second blank is plastically deformed. The first blank and the second blank can be aluminum alloy blanks and a predetermined amount of material is machined from the FSW start spot and the FSW stop spot, the predetermined amount of material being equal to or greater than a thickness of the first blank and the second blank.

The present invention relates to methods to join at least first and second metallic components in which a pre-treatment is applied to one or more region(s) of at least one of the components to be welded together before welding takes place. The pre-treatment involves contacting at least a region of the first metallic component with a rotating and translating tool such that the rotating and translating contact locally heats, softens, and mixes successive portions of at least the region of the first metallic component. The first and second metallic components are placed together such that a joint is provided between at least the pre-treated region of the first metallic component and the second metallic component. At least the pre-treated region of the first metallic component is welded to the second metallic component along at least a portion of the joint.