Electric Resistance Welding

Electric resistance welding (ERW) refers to a group of welding processes such as spot and seam welding that produce coalescence of faying surfaces where heat to form the weld is generated by the electrical resistance of material vs the time and the force used to hold the materials together during welding. Some factors influencing heat or welding temperatures are the proportions of the workpieces, the coating or the lack of coating, the electrode materials, electrode geometry, electrode pressing force, weld current and weld time. Small pools of molten metal are formed at the point of most electrical resistance (the connecting surfaces) as a high current (100–100,000 A) is passed through the metal. In general, resistance welding methods are efficient and cause little pollution, but their applications are limited to relatively thin materials and the equipment cost can be high (although in production situations the cost per weld may be as low as $0.04 USD per weld depending on application and manufacturing rate).