26 Welding Technology and Design

flow for a specific time to supply the requisite heat to the weld and then shall cease
for another predetermined length of time before the next spot weld is begun. In
this way the heating of the rollers can be controlled.
Seam welding can be carried out on steels, aluminium, magnesium and nickel
alloys. Seam welding of copper and its alloys is not recommended. High frequency
seam welding is suitable for finned tubes and other tubings.
Projection welding is similar to spot welding excepting that welding is carried
out at places in the sheet or plates where there are projections made for this purpose.
The projections are created by pressing at the selected places in the sheet. Resistance
to heat being confined to the projections, welding between the parts takes place by
the application of adequate pressure at the appropriate time at these point of contact.
Projection welding is particularly applicable to mass production work, and is quite
suitable where many spot welds are required in a restricted area. Projection welding
method is used in welding brackets, heavy steel stampings, in the encapsulation of
thyristers etc.
Upset butt weld is obtained by bringing two pieces of metals to end-to-end
contact under pressure and then allowing current to flow from one piece to the
other. The contact surfaces should be as smooth as possible. In upset welding (as
also in flash butt welding) a forge structure results as against the cast structure
obtained in spot and projection welding. Welding of tools to the shank is carried
out by upset welding. Resistance butt welding is employed for joining tubes as
schematically shown in Fig. 1.13.

Fig. 1.13 Resistance butt welding.

In flash butt welding the two pieces to be welded are pressed against each other
by applying a pressure so that contact will be at points due to surface roughness. A
high welding current is passed. The surfaces are heated upto molten condition,
and as one piece is slowly advanced towards the other the molten metal is flashed
out. After the faces attain plastic stage upsetting pressure is applied, leading to
bonding of the two faces. Flash butt welding is different from resistance pressure
welding in the sense that in flash butt weld contacts between the two surfaces are
made at some point only due to the roughness of the surface. In resistance butt
weld a smooth full contact surface is preferred.