Electron beam welding (EBW) plays an important role in the process of shunt manufacturing. In the welding machine, electrons are generated and then accelerated to very high speeds using electrical fields. This high-speed stream of electrons is then focused and precisely applied to the contact areas of copper and manganin strips to be joined. As the electrons impact the materials their kinetic energy is converted to heat, which causes the copper and manganin to melt and flow together.
We closely controlled the weld penetration and can achieve a very high depth-to-width ratio, which means a deep and very narrow heat-affected zone. Therefore, the material shrinkage and distortion are minimized, which is a key factor for the manufacturing of low temperature coefficient shunts, which can be integrated with latching relays.
For customized manganin shunts, the thickness, and width of the EBW strips are determined by customers’ specifications or drawings. We can get a precision EBW strip with a thickness range from 0.4mm to 5mm and width no more than 200mm. For EBW strip thinner than 3.5mm, we roll the material which can be feed to the high-speed stamping machine automatically in the next work station. After stamping, we get the EBW manganin shunts with resistance value less than 0.002 Ohm and temperature coefficient less than 20ppm/K. For the full production process of shunts, please refer to the article below.