tig ?

[redbeard]

Brazing is often done with tubing applications or other uses in plumbing or heat exchanger fabrication / manufacture. Brazing doesn't melt or otherwise change the shape of the base materials. It can be done on multiple areas at the same tine, even in accessible interior areas when done in a furnace.

Radiators and other heat exchangers can be assembled with a brazing paste or thin braze strips, clamped into a fixture, and the whole assembly placed into an oven. Assembly is heated and the whole thing is bonded.

It can also he used for high strength or high hardness materials such as tool steel to join parts without compromising the base material properties nearly as much as with welding. Also used to attach carbide or other materials to tooling shanks or cutters.

A good brazing bond is very strong. A typical reason to braze is that it may allow less distortion of the workpiece than welding (due to e.g., not needing to inputs as much heat energy into the workpiece that is required when welding.)

Some brazing techniques also allow joining parts together that could not possibly be welded. For example, check out how intercooler (and other heat exchanger) cores are typically manufactured, using oven brazing. Oven brazing can allow joining together many intricate fins and tubes and plates that would be impossible to join with a welding process, due to many of those joints being inaccessible.

A typical reason why *not* to braze is that it may not be strong enough (especially if the part being joined undergoes heat cycles and/or elevated temperatures.) Various other reasons why the braze material properties may be objectionable, depending on the materials and application used.

So it is basically soldering at higher temps with bronze instead of tin/lead, or am I missing something more profound?