Brazing is widely used to join materials in majority of industrial joining processes. Brazing offers several advantages over other joining processes. Extensive research in the field of brazing has resulted in many developments in the terms of brazing alloy, brazing processes, brazing equipment etc. These developments found brazing as a novel and advanced joining process. At present, brazing, particularly vacuum brazing found numerous applications not only in the aerospace, defense but also in high strength and high temperature engineering applications. Besides the technical advancements, brazing is still considered as an art as it involves many critical operations right from design to testing and inspection of brazed assemblies. This article tries brings out the practical aspects of brazing in general and vacuum brazing in particular. This article also sheds light on practical aspects of brazing of compact plate fin heat exchangers such as cleaning, jigs and fixtures, Materials for fixtures, assembling, filler materials, application of filler, gap control, furnace requirements, brazing cycle, furnace degassing, shrinkage, temperature control, inspection and testing etc. The role of Magnesium in vacuum brazing of aluminum is also discussed. Vacuum brazing furnace requirements and maintenance of vacuum furnaces were also discussed.
展开▼
