Friction Stir Welding is a relatively new and innovative joining process invented and developed at TWI (formerly The Welding Institute) in the UK.
Being a solid state process, FSW overcomes many of the problems associated with the melting and resolidification of traditional arc welding. A rotating tool is moved along the line of a butt or lap joint, generating frictional heat that softens the material of the parts being joined. Together with carefully controlled clamping, the result is high strength, defect free welding.
Meta's SLPi, which uses the company's high resolution Smart Laser Sensor (SLS), detects the line of the weld joint so that the rotating tool moves exactly along the correct path. With a combination of a mega-pixel camera, high quality uniform laser stripe and special optical and electronics designs, the SLS gives a very high quality joint profile from which the seam position can be extracted reliably. The tool is therefore able to be guided accurately along the line of the joint.
Meta Vision Systems Ltd is proud to be participating in the EU Framework 7 project 'Flexifab'. The FLEXIFAB project has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme for research, technical development and demonstration. For further details please visit: