EWI has announced an agreement with S-Bond Technologies, giving the company the ability to distribute its environmental-friendly lead-free, fluxless solder marketed by EWI as EWI SonicSolder. The agreement is effective immediately.

Dr Ronald Smith, president of S-Bond Technologies states: “We are pleased to partner with EWI in growing the application of fluxless solder joining technologies. We see our partnership with EWI and our licensing of its SonicSolder technology as an enhancement to our own patented active solder product line by broadening our capabilities to provide more cost effective assembly solutions.”

Henry Cialone, president and CEO of EWI says: “We’re excited to partner with S-Bond Technologies, further leveraging our patent in the marketplace. The partnership gives S-Bond a nic addition to its already strong portfolio of solder that will hopefully open up new markets for them with its cost-effective pricing.”

EWI SonicSolder is an EWI patented binary lead-free solder alloy that melts at 231 degree C. In conjunction with ultrasonic soldering, it can be used to join difficult-to-wet materials like aluminum, titanium, glass, ceramics, and dissimilar materials. Potential applications include tubing, electronics, medical products, and structural components. In various base-metal (copper, aluminum, titanium) combinations, shear strength of about 5 kilo pound per square inch (ksi) has been obtained. Currently available in ingot form, the solder will be available in a wire form at a later date.

EWI is a leading engineering and technology organisation dedicated to materials joining and allied technologies. The company provides applied research, manufacturing support, and strategic services to nearly 2,800 member company locations of global leaders in the aerospace, automotive, defence, energy and chemical, government, heavy manufacturing, and electronics industries.

Petrochemicals

Construction, repair, maintenance and life extension are the major activities undertaken in the petrochemical industry that involve welding and allied technologies. EWI supports these activities by researching, developing and deploying new technologies to the industry. The construction of pressure vessels and refineries are served by developing new technologies like penetration enhancing compound/flux (PEC) which improve productivity and quality. Repair, maintenance and life extension involve inspection and welding. These aspects are helped by EWI’s non-destructive evaluation team and the arc welding and automation team.

The high temperature exposure to the welds in the petrochemical industry is a concern for the integrity of welds and the thickness of sheets or tubes welded can vary significantly. EWI provides a good variety of capabilities to serve as an extension of engineering knowledge of the member companies.

Pipelines

Pipelines are expected to last a long time and operate in severe environmental and climate conditions. Naturally, the welds on a pipe must be of the highest standard. As a valued resource to the pipeline welding industry, EWI has helped many pipeline companies overcome myriad construction, maintenance, and repair challenges.

EWI has developed and deployed advanced inspection technologies such as Automated Ultrasonic Testing (AUT). Other important services include in-service repair and hot-tapping. EWI has managed several successful programmes for Pipeline Research Council International, the Department of Transportation, and other organisations aimed at developing and deploying various welding and inspection related technologies.

“Our welding and mechanical engineers, metallurgists, material scientists and chemists work together to identify the best materials and processes for specific applications. We bring indepth expertise and experience in key disciplines, including: joining processes; materials; design and integrity; nondestructive inspection; and laboratory testing,” says the company in a press release.

Oil and Gas

EWI has a long history of developing new alloys and state-of-the-art joining technologies to companies involved in oil and gas exploration, production and refinement, and chemical processing.

“Through a variety of services, we help manufacturers meet the technical challenges of recovering and transporting oil and gas efficiently from remote locations, and show them how to optimise the fabrication, operation, maintenance and repair of complex refinery equipment,” says an EWI release.

EWI Weld Predictor

The patent-pending EWI WeldPredictor online tool integrates EWI’s welding simulation and modeling domain knowledge with the computing power of the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC). It offers a novel method for creating finite element analysis (FEA) welding simulations for a range of joint geometries.

E-Weld Predictor can be accessed with a personal computer and an Internet connection. “You simply input your welding parameters, joint geometry, and type of material through a user friendly interface. Then, at the click of a button, finite element analysis (FEA) calculations are performed with results viewable in .pdf report format,” says the company.

Until now, accessing the computer power required to generate such complex calculations has been cost prohibitive for most medium-to small-sized companies.

But E-Weld Predictor couples the data processing power of the Ohio Supercomputer Centre with EWI’s engineering knowledgebase so that more organisations can experiment with simulation research and thereby trim their overall scale-up and design budgets.

E-Weld Predictor’s user-defined models/modules interact with commercial, off-the-shelf, finite element analysis (FEA) packages. This novel method of offering FEA welding simulations for simpler joint geometries is currrently geared toward the oil and gas and heavy manufacturing industry sectors.