Process for joining metals

Abstract

A method is disclosed for joining two or more pieces of metal along a seam line by directing a jet of liquid metal onto the seam, the surfaces of which, at the seam region of the metals to be joined, have been pre-melted just before the liquid metal jet is poured on, the pre-melting being done by an energy carrying beam of radiation, e.g. an electron beam or a laser beam, of high power density, a mixture of molten metals thus being formed which thereafter will cool, solidify, and thereby join the various metal pieces into a single welded structure. By making the power and power density of the radiation beam used for pre-melting sufficiently high, only a thin surface layer is melted rapidly; it will adhere to the underlying solid interface by natural adhesion. On account of the rapidity of the melting only a minimum of the beam energy is lost by heat conduction. No beam energy is used up for melting the liquid metal jet; the latter also acts as filler for any size of gap in the seam area. Thus, the energy for the melt coming from two different sources, not only from the radiation beam, this joining process is faster than conventional electron beam or laser beam welding and it can accommodate larger joint gaps. The same process can be used to clad a pre-melted metal surface by a thin layer of another metal supplied by the liquid metal jet.