The present invention includes: a primary joining process in which a coarse portion having a predetermined width is formed in the vicinity of a step side face within a plasticized region while the rotary tool is being moved one round along a first butted portion to perform friction stirring in a state that a tip of a tip side pin of a rotary tool being rotated is inserted to the same depth as or slightly deeper than a step bottom face and an outer circumferential face of a base side pin is in contact with a front face of a sealing body and the tip side pin is slightly in contact with at least an upper portion of a jacket body and an inspection process in which a passed position of the tip side pin is specified by performing, a flaw detection to detect the coarse portion.

The present invention provides a process for suppressing abnormal grain growth in friction stir welded aluminum alloys by inserting an intermediate annealing treatment (“IAT”) after the welding step on the article. The IAT may be followed by a solution heat treatment (SHT) on the article under effectively high solution heat treatment conditions. In at least some embodiments, a deformation step is conducted on the article under effective spin-forming deformation conditions or under effective superplastic deformation conditions. The invention further provides a welded article having suppressed abnormal grain growth, prepared by the process above. Preferably the article is characterized with greater than about 90% reduction in area fraction abnormal grain growth in any friction-stir-welded nugget.

The invention has a feature of comprising a butting process of forming a stepped butted portion and a joining process of performing friction-stir-welding on the stepped butted portion, wherein the rotary tool includes a base side pin having a taper angle larger than a taper angle of a tip side pin, and a pin step portion in a staircase shape is formed on an outer circumferential face of the base side pin, and wherein in the joining process, a rotation direction and a translation method of the rotary tool are set such that the second metal member is on an advancing side, a target angle by which a rotation axis of the rotary tool is inclined toward the second metal member is set such that a burr formed on a front face of the second metal member after the joining process has a thickness between 0 and 130 μm.

A stamped part includes a first blank, a second blank, and a weld joining the first blank to the second blank. The weld includes opposing ends. At least one of the opposing ends of the weld is recessed from adjacent edges of the first and second blanks.

There is provided a method for producing a metal-resin composite which includes a resin member and a metal member having a roughened surface in at least a portion of the surface thereof, the resin member being joined so as to be in contact with at least a portion of the roughened surface. The method includes a step of joining the resin member and the metal member by melting the resin member with the frictional heat generated in the surface of the metal member on its side opposite to the resin member in a state where the metal member and the resin member are superposed. The method includes making adjustment so that when the roughened surface is measured at arbitrary five points by using a confocal microscope according to ISO 25178, the developed area ratio (Sdr) is 5 or more in terms of number-average value.

A vehicle door beam and related methods of making door beams include a flat-rolled aluminum alloy sheet, where two edges of the sheet that are transverse to the roll direction of the sheet are brought together to form a tube. The two edges are friction stir welded together to form a butt joint along a length of the tube. The tube is arranged, along with other optional components, as a side-impact door beam in a vehicle door, such that the butt joint is facing away from an expected impact direction of the vehicle door.

A jacket main body is formed of a first aluminum alloy. A seal body is formed of a second aluminum alloy. The first aluminum alloy is higher in hardness than the second aluminum alloy in material type. A method includes: a preparing step of forming on an peripheral wall part a step part having a step bottom surface and a step side surface obliquely rising; a mounting step of mounting the seal body on the jacket main body to form a first butt portion and putting the step bottom surface and a back surface of the seal body on each other to form a second butt portion; a main joining step of performing friction stir welding while only the stirring pin of the rotary tool rotating contacts with only the seal body.

The disclosed wall includes several narrow aluminum sheets and posts that are Friction Stir Welded (FSW) into a sidewall. The length of the wall is the summation of the narrow sheets' width, and the walls width is the narrow sheets' length. Several aluminum posts are spaced along the wall's length direction in order to improve the stiffness and strength of the wall. When welding the aluminum sheets and posts together, the sheets are placed under the posts and jointed tightly together through FSW. With the high-speed spinning of the stirring pin, the post and sheet melt and form into a compact solid phase weld seam under the extrusion of the welding head. When welding two aluminum sheets and one post together, the two sheets are placed edge-to-edge or slightly overlapped. The post is then placed over the sheet joint and the stir-welding head melts portions of the post and the two sheets simultaneously.

In some implementations, an apparatus comprises a pipe, a stud that is forge-welded to the pipe, creating a forge-welded stud, a bracket that is operably coupled to the forge-welded stud, and a ladder support operably coupled to the bracket.

Certain exemplary embodiments can provide a manufacturing method, process, machine, and/or system for continuously consolidating granular materials, creating new alloys and/or composites, and/or modifying and/or refining material microstructure, by using plastic deformation of feedstock(s) provided in various structural forms. Materials produced during this process can be fabricated directly and/or in forms such as, e.g., wires, rods, tubes, sheets, plate and/or channels, etc.