Welded profile applications have been steadily increasing over the last 10 to 15 years, driven mainly by the automotive industry. As they look for ways to increase strength and reduce weight, automobile engineers continually research materials and forming processes to find the best combinations of part design, weight, and strength. To get a piece of this growing pie, roll formers need to consider manufacturability and reliability. How easy or difficult will it be to manufacture this profile? How stiff and strong will it be? Will the product be consistent from one run to the next and one day to the next? For experienced roll formers, these questions have more to do with welding than with roll forming. Although many welding technologies have been used on tube and pipe mills, three have come to the forefront: tungsten inert gas (TIG), formally identified by the American Welding Society as gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW); laser beam welding (LBW); and high-frequency induction (HFI), formally known as induction resistance seam welding (RSEW-I). These technologies can be divided into two groups, fusion welding and forge welding. GTAW and laser are fusion welding technologies, relying mainly on heat to fuse the material. HFI is a forge welding technology, which uses a combination of heat and pressure.
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