ULTRASONIC ROLL SEAM WELDING FOR THE PRODUCTION OF GLASS METAL COMPOUNDS/

The joining technology of glasses and glass-ceramics with metal is gro wing in importance in view of the increased application possibilities of such compound parts in the machinery and electronics industries. A new method has recently gone into competition with the current product ion methods of these compounds such as melting, soldering and glueing. This novel method is ultrasonic welding. So far this joining technolo gy has only been applied in ultrasonic spot welding. However, it is no w possible to manufacture compounds with a shear strength of up to 50 MPa at low temperatures (<400 degrees C) in short periods of time (<1. 5 s). To extend the application of ultrasonic welding the Department o f Materials Science at the University of Kaiserslautern (Germany) has constructed and put into operation an ultrasonic roll seam welding mac hine for the continuous and intermittent joining of glass and glass-ce ramics with metal. So far this device has, among other things, been us ed to join a borosilicate and a soda - lime- silica glass with several kinds of high alloyed steel, an aluminium alloy and the glass sealing alloy KOVAR (NiCo 29 17) with the addition of a thin intermediate lay er of aluminium. By means of systematic studies of the parameters feed , welding force and amplitude, that significantly influence the weldin g process, an optimization of the compound strength has been achieved.