Brazing...the welding alternative

[oldtamiyaphile]

While looking into bonding methods I came into a very interesting product that has the potential to help out all the non-welders out there.

The company offers two products, one for ferous metals with a claimed tensile strength of 100,000psi, and one for non-ferous metals with a claimed tensile strength of 46,000psi.

Here's the demo video on aluminium:

http://www.aluminumrepair.com/video_new.asp

Potentially these joints could be much stronger than welding. Can anyone offer any input or experience with similar products?

[starleen2]

Interesting - I guess they must have a rod for disimilar metals. The bolt thread demo was imperessive

[Steve_Cox]

Wow! Did you see the repair to the hole in the aluminum can? That was awesome! I saved a link to their website. Having made a puddle of melted aluminum with a torch before, I must say that it would require some practice to use that stuff, but with a melt temperature 500 degrees less than aluminum (melt temp about 1220 degrees F) the learning curve would be pretty short. Good find.

[tears4mama]

lurker here planing her first build.

that looks great. My dad used to work for a co. that built welders and he has one. However, that looked more than I wanted to tackle. Can you make a sturdy road worthy trailer out of alluminum?

[oldtamiyaphile]

That's what I am planning on doing. I was planing on bonding and riveting (like a fighter jet or Lotus Elise), but this looks better, and field repairs are very easy if you just take a propane torch tip and brazing rod with you (not that they should be needed).

With welding, strength comes from a relatively small bead. With brazing you can easily use angle brakets to create lap joins like DIY bolt up trailers, but you can braze entire surface of the bracket to the frame. That's a rediculously strong joint.

The cost of aluminium is quite high compared to steel, and this brazing rod is also quite expensive, so it probably would be cheaper to pay someone to build you a steel frame. Part of the reason I'm going with alloy is that I have a trade discount and I want to do something different. My goal weight is 500lbs (to put that in perspective that's what two push bikes are designed to support), we don't need a massive structure. I will be using things like military surplus Ti bolts though

With brazing being an easily removable joint, it lets me spec light weight members, which can easily be replaced and up rated if they start to show signs of stress. This has less to do wth the strength of alloy and more with my design and testing principal. If something is too strong, it's hard to ever know by how much. If something is too weak we can measure deflection and make a design choice for the replacement.

The same company also sells brazing rod for steel though. That would be cheap on materials and DIY labour