Bet you’ve never seen this sort of welding before. It’s called friction welding.
Technically, because no melt occurs, friction welding is not actually a welding process in the traditional sense, but a forging technique. However, due to the similarities between these techniques and traditional welding, the term has become common. Friction welding is used with metals and thermoplastics in a wide variety of aviation and automotive applications.
So very cool. Science! [h/t Daniel Mark]
Never seen, but heard of it, because Apple uses this technique to craft the iMac Cases (front bezel welding to backcorpus) – as Phil Schiller told us on the keynote, when he introduced the slimline iMac model to the world.
Caterpillar uses this technique extensively.
I love friction. Way more than gravity.
Very cool, and you have to love the smooth weld lines it leaves behind. Even a highly skilled welder would have a hard time matching those lines.
The wikipedia article is in fact wrong as the older welding technique was the forge welding where like here metal is heated at plastic state just before fusion and a force is applied (pressure in this case, hammering for forge). Welding dont imply going to fusion, just mixing both parts in the weld zone.
Friction welding big advantage is that after an initial investement in tooling a bit costly, it is both cheaper and stronger than traditional methods.
Not limited to metal either, I’ve seen video of wood linear welding !
Such science.