Fifty Years of Nonvacuum Electron Beam Welding

摘要

Since its introduction to industry some 50 years ago, the nonvacuum EBW process has been employed for welding a variety of high-volume production components for the automotive industry. Initially the process was used for fairly simple linear welds, but the process evolved to the point where it could be used for complex two- and three-dimensional welds. Figure 5 shows a 40-in.-long automobile dashboard component presently being produced with the NVEBW process in both Europe and Japan. A CNC controlled simultaneous motion of both part (X/Y-axes) and gun/column assembly (Z-axis) is used to accomplish joining of these two aluminum segments at welding speeds in the range of 300 to 500 in./min (Ref. 6). Thus the process has over the past five decades demonstrated its inherent capacity for adapting to a broad range of work-piece conditions and operating environments generally associated with automotive applications.