by Joseph
Vacuum Brazing with Dan Kay
Vacuum Brazing with Dan Kay
Don’t Blame the Braze because Joint was Poorly Designed, and NO, larger fillets won’t compensate for that! Have you ever heard someone tell you something like this: “Well, brazing may be okay, but if you really want a strong joint, you should weld it!” Such comments are often made when someone sees what appears to be a cracked brazed-joint, such as that shown in Figure 1, and they then assume that (1) the crack they are looking at probably extends all the way through the brazed-joint, and that (2) if the joint had been welded it would not have cracked. In the actual, real-life case shown in the close-up drawing in Figure 1, the comment about brazing vs. welding was actually made by an engineer who saw the part. But he was very wrong! The actual cause of the joint-failure was a poor joint design that placed very high stress concentration right at the edge of the brazed joint.