Overview:

The spot welder joins a stainless steel shaft to stainless steel sleeve during motor assembly.

Process Description:

The motor assembly is loaded into a fixture, which aligns the rotor inside the motor casing. Once loaded, the fixture retracts into the operating zone. The shaft is then clamped to maintain alignment of the assembly during processing.

Once the assembly is in position and clamped, the "dead" tip is brought into contact with the shaft under slight pressure, and locked in place. This ensures that the shaft does not deflect when the "hot" tip is brought into position. As the hot tip is engaged, a force trigger detects sufficient contact force and triggers the weld operation.  The weld is completed in less than a second, and the mechanism is unlocked and retracted.

Technical Challenge:

The main challenge of this process was the welding process. The process was proven before the equipment was designed through cooperation with the weld equipment vendor, Miyachi Unitek. Proofing the process ensured that a relatively expensive process would be successful, which it was.