DESCRIPTION OF DRAWING FIGURES
Other characteristics and advantages of the invention will become apparent from the following description of an embodiment of a heater mat of a device of the invention and its application to two conduits to be welded. This description is made with reference to the drawings in which:
FIG. 1 shows a portion of a heater mat of a device of the invention,
FIG. 2 shows the mat of FIG. 1 in folded-over position,
FIG. 3 shows a variant of the heater mat of FIG. 1, and
FIG. 4 shows a diagram of a welding cycle with measurement of the temperature at the interface and the force imposed during welding.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION
FIG. 1 shows a portion of a knitted heater mat 1 used for the device of the invention. The mat 1 is obtained by knitting a resistive wire having a 2r diameter, which is coated with an insulating varnish, and has approximately parallelepiped meshes M with dimensions a and b, where a is the dimension of the small side of a cell or mesh M, b is the dimension of the large side of the mesh M, and the product ab is the surface area of a mesh, which corresponds approximately to a heater cell of the heater mat 1. According to the invention, the small side of a mesh M has dimensions ranging from 1.5-2.5 mm and the large side b has dimensions ranging from 3-4.5 mm.
The heater mat 1 is made either in the form of a flat body, or in the form of a sheath. In addition, knitting is carried out so as to give the finished heater mat a certain degree of dimensional flexibility in the lengthwise direction of the mat and a slight degree of flexibility in the widthwise direction.
FIG. 2 shows a heater mat 1 made in the form of a sheath and therefore capable of being threaded over a cylindrical part to be welded, or flattened and used as a strip-like heater mat. In the latter case, the heater mat will thus have two layers of superimposed meshes. In order not to overload FIG. 2, the mat 1 is shown as a single strip, i.e., only the layer oriented towards the reader of the drawings is seen.
FIG. 2 more specifically shows a heater mat 1 in the form of a sheath, flattened and folded over once in order to increase locally the number of layers of meshes and thereby to obtain a localized super-concentration of the welding energy.
As a matter of fact, as shown in FIG. 2, the heater mat 1 is folded over once and the two portions 1A, 1B of the mat thus obtained are arranged so as to be partially staggered in relation to each other and in regard to the number of layers of meshes and the energy capacity to be supplied, so as to obtain a first single mat portion 11, a double mat portion 12 and a second single mat portion 13. Depending on the manner in which the two portions 1A, 1B of the mat 1 are staggered, the double mat portion 12 is relatively wide and relatively long.
FIG. 3 shows a portion of a heater mat 1 of a device of the invention, which differs from that of FIG. 1 in that it has an uneven distribution of the meshes on the surface in question. This uneven distribution of the meshes is obtained manually when the heater mat is positioned on the surface to be melted, by concentrating the meshes over an area requiring a super-concentration of energy, and by spacing out the meshes in the other areas as much as possible.
Because of the knitting style, the meshes of the heater mat 1 are more movable in relation to one another, in one direction than the other. In FIGS. 1-3, the meshes M are more movable in the vertical direction than in the horizontal direction. Thus, when it is a matter of arranging an area requiring a super-concentration of energy, the mat 1 is compressed in the vertical direction and thereby 1 reduces the large side b1 (which corresponds to the side b of FIG. 1) to a small side b2.
For illustrative purposes, FIG. 4 shows a diagram which, for a welding cycle, represents the mechanical stress imposed on two parts being welded (curve A) and the temperature measured at the interface of the assembly (curve B). The welding cycle includes a heating phase lasting approximately 20 sec followed by a relatively rapid cooldown for approximately 10 see and a slower cooldown for approximately 80 sec. This heating cycle is staggered in relation to the cycle for applying the stress imposed on the assembly. As shown in FIG. 4, the heating period begins only approximately 60 sec after the start of a cycles this cycle start-up is marked by a preloading of the assembly, by applying the stress, which increases to the maximum over a period of approximately 10 sec, followed by a certain pause for 50 sec, the period during which the heating period begins. This heating is accompanied by an additional pause and then a restart of the stress applied to the assembly, until the end of the heating period. During cooling of the welded parts, the stress imposed on the assembly decreases rapidly in order to be then maintained at a low level (of the order of 100 N).
Patent Application
20070267404
