copper to copper spot welding

Spot welding ,is not difficult ,but please provide thickness of the pieces to weld and give more details of your project!!,with that i can help you better!!!

Hello ,

I do a little welding but never on copper.

I saw PBS/This Old House tonight they built some lights for a new "green" house that were copper clad pieces of leaded glass put together. They fluxed & soldered the copper together, but they did not actually weld it. When you said "it is not difficult" are you talking about welding , soldering , brassing ? I want to learn this too.

Thanks

Joe

"I saw PBS/This Old House tonight they built some lights for a new "green" house that were copper clad pieces of leaded glass put together. They fluxed & soldered the copper together, but they did not actually weld it."

A hobbyist's easy way to make leaded or 'stained' glass art work from bits and pieces of colored glass. The glass is cut and laid out in the desired pattern. The edges of each piece are then wrapped with a thin narrow strip of polished copper with adhesive on the side next to the edge of the glass piece, and the pattern reassembled. The exposed copper edges are fluxed and solder applied along the joints so as to make a solid assembly. The entire pattern assembly is then turned over and flux and solder applied to the back side. Flux is removed with alcohol and the glass cleaned. Look for stained glass, making stained glass windows, etc. Check the phone book classifieds.

Spot welding is a resistance welding technique. The resistance between the metals to be spot welded hinders the flow of current resulting in the heating of metal because of (sq. of current x resistance of metal effect.) At that high temparatue, metal attains plastic state and spot welding can be done. But in case of copper, which is a very good conductor of electricity, the resisnce offered for flow of current is very small and hence the heating effect because of current is negligible. Because of this spot welding of copper is difficult. But however if copper has some imurities which increases the resistance then spot welding is posible with very high current in the order of 80,000 to 1,00,000 Amps. You may contact Sciaky machine tools for spot welding machines.

G.D.girish

Dear Ashish,

If you can describe the :

Material Spec-OFHC /Brasses/Bronzes/

Thickness

Spot or Seam? Can you do with TIG,MIG/MAG? Heavy Production/ rare repairs?

Fixed Frame machine OR

Portable?

230v/420V-2 wire? Water supply?

Can you import 1 machine from China?

Mail me by 1 May.mikemahant@hotmail.com

I will discuss in China your best deal and quote.

A former reply to this problem- regarding the low resistance of copper- thus the extremely high current necessary to to liquify and meld the material -describes the crux of the problem of spot welding copper.

However, copper of any thickness bonds very well using silver / bronze alloy brazing materials. Depending upon the the temperature that the copper will be subjected to in service, you may want to consider insertion of a thin-flux-coated wafer of this brazing alloy, and using a spot welder to induce the heat and pressure needed to affect the bond. Safety-Silv 45 by Harris welding products is such an alloy. Contact them regarding tensile strength, and other properties. Odd Parts Fabrication.

ashish

I've always brazed my copper joints. The thicknes of the plates is really an important temperature consideration in any kind of joining technology, since you don't want to hole them.

Mark