Discussion. The Application of Electricity to Welding, Stamping, and Other Cognate Purposes.

Abstract

Sir JOHN COODE, President, said that at the end of last year Professor Elihu Thomson, the inventor of the process, had been asked to communicate a description of the system of electric welding, but owing to numerous engagements he was unable to prepare a Paper for the Institution, and thereupon Sir Frederick Bramwell had kindly undertaken to do so; he had taken an immense amount of trouble in the fulfilment of his task, and deserved the hearty thanks of the members. He would now ask Sir Frederick to give some practical illustrations showing the process in operation ; and he could not help thinking that the members would be as much struck as he himself had been with the marvellous simplicity of the process. The heating of the carbons of the arc lamp had been before the world about a quarter of a century ; the two carbons had been brought close together in a state of fusion, and it was remarkable that no one had before thought of putting two metals together in the same way and giving them a squeeze ; for that was what, put in the simplest terms, the process amounted to.SirFrederick Sir FREDEPJCK BRAMWELL observed that as the President had already explained, the Paper had been written at his invitation ; if, therefore, the time of the Institution had been occupied by an uninteresting subject the President only was to blame.The process of welding, as ordinarily understood, depended upon a property possessed by the so-called weldable metals, which was, that while their surfaces could be brought into a sufficient degree of plasticity to form a union, their bodies were nevertheless still left sufficiently tough to bear the stress of hammering or pressure. Dr. Percy had explained the matter in the clearest possible manner, with regard to the typical weldable metals, and in speaking of non-weldable metals, he had shown what was needed to enable them to be united by fusi0n.l It would be