Surface World November 2019 Surface World November 2019 | Page 36

IMF: INSTITUTE OF MATERIALS FINIHSING
A Night with “ALI”
A Southern Branch Seminar held at The Churchillian,
Portsdown, Portsmouth. 3rd October 2019
The evening of 3rd October 2019 saw the
Southern Branch of the IMF hold a seminar
(in conjunction with the Welding Institute)
entitled: A Night with “ALI”
This was our first venture to hold a seminar in conjunction with
another Institute and from the many people that attended it proved to
be very successful.
The subject A Night with “ALI” was all about Aluminium and its alloys.
Our first speaker was Jan Lukaszewski from the Aluminium Federation
(AlFED) who gave an overview of the origin of aluminium, today’s use
of aluminium and its predicted future growth.
Nigel went on to talk about MIG welding (which is the most common
method) and the use of an inert shielding gas such as argon, helium
or a mixture. The reason for this is down to the fact that aluminium is
very reactive to oxygen and this has to be kept away from the
aluminium in order to prevent its formation and ruining the weld joint.
Nigel discussed the types of equipment that should be used, the
various filler metals available in order to produce the weld joint and
the array of shielding gases that can be used which BOC supply.
He concluded with some of the problems that can be thrown up
during the welding operation and what the welder should look out for
and how to overcome them.
Jan described the use of Aluminium in the automotive industry, the
Construction industry, its physical properties such as electrical
conductivity, thermal conductivity, non-magnetic and in the use of
soundproofing.
The event also had Hitachi there who were demonstrating their latest
thickness testing equipment which seemed to attract a lot of interest.
Jan also talked about the ability of aluminium to alloy and described
the different alloying materials and the effects that they have on the
properties of the material.
Our next speaker was John Burgess who spoke about the
“Electroplating of Aluminium”.
John described the zincate process for plating aluminium, the
importance of each stage of the operation and what to look for
during each stage of the operation in order to achieve a successful
finish.
The talk was broken down into a basic outline of the properties of
aluminium, the preparation and pre-treatment, etching and the two
different types of etch that can be used and the zincate process for
laying down a thin zinc coating.
Our final speaker was Nigel Hastead from BOC who gave a talk on
the Welding of Aluminium.
Nigel explained the difficulties in the welding of aluminium due to the
tenacious oxide layer which is always present.
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NOVEMBER 2019
The Churchillian laid on an array of sandwiches and there was also a
bar available.
All in all we felt that the evening was a success and are now in the
process of sorting next year’s meetings.
If you would like to be able to look at the papers that were
given in their entirety, then these are available through the
following link, just enter the following into a web browser.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/
UCal3E2uHfSRpiKjZ5iXZATw?view
John Burgess
twitter: @surfaceworldmag