MATERIALS THAT WE WORK WITH

The main material used within Resistance Welding applications is Copper, or a form of copper, due to its high conductivity.

We work with a variety of copper alloys on a daily basis, from Beryllium Copper, Chrome Copper, and Copper Zirconium through to Tungsten Copper.

 

Other materials are used for various applications including Aluminium, NCS, Brass and non-conductive materials for location pins.

 

The copper alloys used by WES are in accordance with BS4577:

•  Zirconium Copper (ZrCu) – Generally used for cold formed parts.

•  Chrome Zirconium Copper (CrZrCu) – The general purposes copper used for holders, adaptors, electrodes, shanks & threaded adaptors, gun arms, tooling.

•  Cobalt Beryllium Copper (CoBeCu 0.5%) – Used for electrodes (non-preferred) when welding heat resisting steels: stainless, titanium, nimonic steels. Used widely for some adaptors, gun arms etc.. where high weld forces or stresses are involved. This is a much more resilient material than CrZrCu.

•  Beryllium Copper (BeCu 2%) – Extremely resilient and tough. This material resembles brass in colour. It is not to be used for spot welding electrodes except for back-up’s. Primarily used for tip adaptors and holders of various types. The Japanese appear to have a general preference for this material.

•  Copper Tungsten (Elkonite) – Primarily used as a back-up material where high electrode wear is present. Found frequently on projection welding tooling.

Below is a small selection of the other metals that we use on a daily basis for various Resistance Welding applications.

•  Aluminium - this material is most commonly found on large aluminium gun arms for its weight saving against copper arms. The aluminium specification is usualy 7075 or the lesser 6082.

•  Nickel Chrome Silicon (NCS) - recognised as a Beryllium free alternative to the CoBeCu (0.5%). Its properties are similar to the CoBeCu (0.5%) but without the associated H&S issues.

•  Brass - high tensile HTB1 Brass is often used in Castings of gun arms.