Affiliation(s)
1. Department of Polymers, University of Minho, Guimarães 4800-058, Portugal
2. Engineering Department, Aptiv, Lisbon 1600-514, Portugal
3. Polytechnic Institute of Setubal, Setubal 2910-761, Portugal
4. Superior Institute of Engineering, Lisbon 1959-007, Portugal
ABSTRACT
The ultrasonic
welding process for wires is being largely used on industry mainly on
applications that involve the connection between similar or different metals. The biggest benefit of this
technology is the possibility to perform the weld without addition materials,
like terminals, metal rings or tapes. Manufacturing of wiring harnesses demands
a significant amount of joining, such as welding, crimping or soldering, to
fulfill the desired layout of the harnesses and capacity requirements, but
conventional connection processes, face difficulties in joining multiple cross
sections mainly due to the characteristics of the processes and equipment in
use. Ultrasonic metal welding process overcomes these issues due to the
solid-state characteristics inherent to the process itself that include the
excellent electrical properties of the joint. Several researches on ultrasonic
metal welding are being done to define the fundamental mechanisms behind this
process and it is being seen that they are completely dependent on the cross
section to be welded. With this research we are trying to develop methods for
process characterization and define acceptable quality parameters in this
process. The main topics addressed in this paper are the
characterization the weld formation using copper-to-copper wires using optical
microscopy and the analysis of insulation material when submitted to different thermal conditions.
KEYWORDS
Ultrasonic metal
welding, wiring harnesses, insulated wires, splices, harness assemblies, PVC (Polyvinyl Chloride).
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