Aluminum casting aircraft engine repair consulting case
Appears in 2 lectures.
Appearances across the corpus
Recent (Jan 24, 2014) consulting question from "Chuck," chief engineer at an FAA-approved aircraft piston engine crankcase repair shop. Customer's 3/8" stud stripped at 204 inch-pounds in a 4043-filler weld repair. Tom walks through SAE/AMS specifications, Aluminum Association filler metal recommendations (4043, 4145, 4009, 4010, 4011, 4047), and the reasoning for matching vs. over-matching vs. under-matching filler metal selection.
Foreshadow only — Tom announces the case will be developed in detail on Friday. The shop is one of the only FAA-authorized aluminum casting weld repair operations in the US; they had been using 4043 filler metal since 1976 and were criticized in a Canadian Aviation Authority report following a crash investigation. Used to set up a filler-metal-selection case study.
What I'm going to do on Friday is take you through some free consulting I did for a shop — I mentioned this a little while ago — that repairs aluminum castings for aircraft engines. They are one of the only shops in the country that's authorized by the Federal Aviation Administration to do weld repair on these castings. They had developed a process — they think they were using 4043 on this particular casting alloy, I had to look it up — and we'll go through on Friday how I use this chart.