R&D cooperation

A variety of models and financing options are available for collaboration with companies, welding equipment suppliers and other R&D institutions:

• Research and development projects for competitive purposes, such as within the AiF research association for welding and ancillary processes, allow partners from industry to participate in the project support committee with direct influence on project goals and results. 
• Joint projects and marketing aims can be agreed with proportionate public funding from the German and Saxony-Anhalt government or the EU in national or international collaborative research.
• Confidential joint agreements in contract R&D benefit clients with exclusive rights to the results. Various financing options are available for this type of agreement as well.

SLV Halle has around twenty employees, mostly engineers, technicians and welding experts working on technological development in specialised departments:

• Beam welding
• Arc welding
• Pressure welding

Research and development for trades and industry

• Developing and optimising user-oriented process adaptations
• Developing and optimising new adaptations to processes and procedures
• Testing material behaviour in bespoke applications
• Studies on material behaviour during welding
• Consultation on joining technology
• Structural design on welded components
• Simulation of temperature distribution, deformation, internal stress and join condition
• Developing a basis for dimensioning and designing welded structures

Processes and procedures

• Arc welding (TIG welding, plasma welding, deposition welding, drawn-arc and capacitor-discharge stud welding, welding using a magnetically moved arc, submerged arc welding)
• Resistance welding (spot, projection and seam welding, butt welding)
• Laser material processing (laser-beam welding, hardening, brazing, laser-arc hybrid welding)
• Electron-beam welding and electron-beam melting
• Thermal cutting (fuel, plasma and laser cutting)
• Brazing (torch brazing, induction brazing, furnace brazing in inert gas, MIG soldering, resistance soldering)
• Coating (cladding with self-shielded flux-cored wires, MIG wire welding, plasma powder welding, seam welding, TIG hot-wire welding)
• Surface treatment (hardening, remelting, alloying, hardfacing, induction coating)

Services

• Practical and theoretical training (training for international welders and technicians; thermal cutting, mechanization, workshop equipment)
• Research projects
• Industrial research
• Design, project planning and construction of bespoke units and controllers
• Technological consultation
• Welding trainers
• Welding simulation, residual stress and deformation simulation
• Arrangement and design of welded structures
• Support in developing welding drawings

Research

We at SLV Halle take a holistic view in researching joining technology covering every aspect in creating new components from the design and welding process to materials, testing and data processing. We especially focus on pressure, beam and arc welding, and additive manufacture as joining methods. Our research involves developing specialised processes, process variants and welding technologies for new materials and composites and the challenges they involve, as further developments in materials and joining technologies require continuous adjustment in the design and arrangement of welding structures. A wide variety of methods for destructive and non-destructive testing as necessary for research and industry for characterising welded joins round off the range.

SLV Halle works together with industry and other institutes on basic and application research.