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Tube construction: Alternatives to conventional welding

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Vigilant1

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Supporting Member
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Jan 24, 2011
Messages
10,596
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Okay, I can see the looks of disgust already.
Welding is a wonderful skill, and many people enjoy it in its own right.
But, if we want the advantages of a chrome moly tube fuselage but already know in our heart that we do not want to invest the scores of hours needed to master welding and we also don't want to fiddle around with the precise fitting of angled tubes, what are the alternatives? Are there alternatives, assuming we can live with the weight penalties, etc?

1) Fittings made of stamped/pressed sheet metal, with included gussets (i.e. riveted construction used by some British companies during WW-II). These handled some fairly sizeable loads, we're not talking about a pop-riveted hang glider fuselage)
2) Internal fittings (forged?), perhaps brazed or riveted into straight-cut tubing. With 3D printers; it would seem practical to rapidly make a mold of any needed angle/cluster. They wouldn't necessarily need to be "solid" parts of cylindrical cross-section, simple metal "webs" would be lighter and just as strong as the tubing, though they'd need enough area to mate with the tubing)
3) External fittings (forged), brazed or riveted onto straight-cut tubing (similar to the lugs found on some bicycle frames).
4) Other?

Obviously, I'm not the first to think of this, so I'm assuming there's something out there, and leads would be appreciated. Obviously, comments (even snarky ones) are appreciated. Some welding-alternatives that might be impractical for a one-off airframe ("just learn to weld, lazy idiot!") could be pretty useful in a kit: Send out the fittings, builders buy the straight tube locally and chop 'em to length from a simple cut list. Without any angles, a monkey could do it. That's me.

Flame on! (so to speak)

Mark
 
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