Study on the Solid Welding Conditions of Hollow Extrusion of 7075 Aluminum Alloy

Direct extrusion by port hole–bridge die configuration has been successfully used to fabricate products with hollow cross sections for 6000 series aluminum alloys. When these aluminum alloys flow through the upper die (with bridge and port hole) material flows separately. These separate materials contact together when they flow through the lower die (with welding chamber). The contacting and welding processes occurs naturally if the material temperature and contact pressure are suitable; then the product with hollow and complicated cross section will be obtained when the material flow through bearing regions in lower die. This solid welding process for 6000 series aluminum alloys is without any problem. However, if for 7000 series aluminum alloys this situation alerts since different alloy compositions such as Zn and Cu causing welding process in lower die failed. It will impede the success of industry application with light and high strength aluminum alloys. In order to determine the solid welding conditions during hollow extrusion with port-hole die structure for high strength aluminum alloy such as 7000 series, an easy tooling configuration has been designed. Based on this approach, two split and half die components with taper angle feature were inserted into an outer steel ring. In the beginning, some clearances happen between inner die and outer ring result from design in purpose. When the upper punch continues to press the testing billet, the clearance disappears gradually due to the designed taper angle of inner die and outer ring. However, when the pushing pressure from upper punch is over 350 Mpa and billet temperature is maintained at about 480C below melting temperature, small gaps between the two split half die components occur automatically. During this situation, two small flashes can flow into the opening gaps both from the upper and lower billets which then can weld together. However, these two upper and lower billets in direct pressing zone did not weld together. Several experiments at different pressure have been conducted and the best solid welding condition has been obtained. The proposed method (die configuration) is easy and cheap because there is no necessary to conduct experiment in controlled environment such as in vacuum chamber of Gleeble test or in a protective atmosphere. The grain size and grain structure as well as grain flow have been discussed in the proposed paper for testing parts in direct pressing zone and in flash zone. Some SEM photos and EDS analysis have been prepared and will be presented in this paper.