The welding revolution: how FuseRing is changing everything
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Welcome to today's episode of Lexicon. I'm Christopher McFadden, contributing writer for Interesting Engineering. Today we're joined by Paul Cheng, the innovator behind FuseRing, a groundbreaking solid-state welding technology set to revolutionise industries from nuclear energy to aerospace.

Paul shares insights into how his filler-free, high-strength welding process eliminates heat-affected zones and redefines industrial metal joining. So join us as we explore the future of welding, the challenges of disrupting a 75-year-old industry, and why this breakthrough could change how we build everything from spacecraft to submarines. Before getting into today's episode, here's something to elevate your 2025.

Level up your knowledge with IE Plus. Subscribe today to access exclusive premium articles enriched with expert insights and enjoy members-only technical newsletters designed to keep you ahead in technology and science. Subscribe now. Now let's continue with today's episode. Paul, thanks for joining us. How are you today? Fine, thank you, Chris. Thank you for the opportunity. Our pleasure. For our audience's benefit, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, please?

Paul Chang. I worked in the oil and gas sector. I was a ditch digger for many years. Went back to school, roughneck and all that. Went consulting. Probably starved for the next 10 years between 1984 and 1993. Green guy coming out for school, no experience, no contacts. And oil was about $9.50 to $11 per barrel. And when oil goes up to $11.50, we get busy. When it slows down to about $9.50, it slows down.

So it was a tough goal. But after 1993, my phone started to ring and they says, are you Paul Chang? Yes, sir. Are you available? Yes, sir. Well, we need you out there. I says, are you sure you got the right Chang? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are you insured? Yes, yes, yes. Are you certified? Yes, yes. So they didn't call me because they need me because I was the only one left more or less. So, but anyway, since 93, it's been busy every year and I've been very fortunate, very thankful to the oil industry.

I was able to work all over the world on and offshore and had a lot of fun. Excellent. Very busy career by the sound of things. We had fun and I'm very thankful. I have to say, you know, thanks to my wife for her patience because she puts up with me on away 30 days, comes back.

So you know the works. Might explain why you've been married so long. I love my wife and my love for her is true. So I have no hesitation saying that anywhere in the world. Good lad. Same here. Not your wife, mine. Okay. Thanks for clarification. First question. What inspired the development of fusing and what specific problem in welding technology are you trying to solve with it or were you trying to solve with it?

Okay, if I may premise all that, it's a big mouthful, Chris. Before I say anything, can I just premise my position on this whole issue? Of course, please. To my mind, this is new science and there's more than enough money to be made by everyone involved. Some wants this 100% to themselves and nobody else.

So they remain a small, small segment in a huge market. They have 100% of it, but it's a very small target. My position is this is a gigantic global industry that is waiting to be altered, upgraded.

And I'm more than happy to be a percentage player in a global industry. So that's my position. I'll be a percentage player instead of 100% ownership of nothing. I'll be a percentage owner of something. So that's my position. So there are a few companies in North America who knows a lot about this, but they're keeping the cards very close because they want all the IPs to themselves. And I understand that.

Because that's their business, but it will be their only business. My thought is we extended this technology from tubular to linear, from thick to ultra thin. So now our technique applies from deep sea submarine to pipeline, rail, wind towers, automotive, race cars, and medical, pharmaceutical, aerospace, and space.

But to go back to your original question, how did this come about and what am I trying to solve? Industry for the last 75 years really hasn't changed very much because it's under the control of a few big companies. And I'm not going to say their names. They're red and they're blue and there's just a few minor changes. But it's really essentially a few companies. They have the filler material. We have laser. We have EB technology.

friction stir, but they all have heat affected zone. This technique doesn't have that. It is fine grain to fine grain, base to base. So if I may just show you and your audience, this is what we're talking about. An automotive axle. I just cut that because that's all I can lift. But if you see the inside, the root well, the inside well, and the outside well, no stress riser.

So for the people in the welding world, that is something that's never been done before. So to be more manageable size is this guy. Yep. Truly impressive. So this goes to thin also. Now what's different about this is the OD and the ID, the outside of the well is in compression. So that is fundamentally different than any of the other wells technique in the world. So 12, 3, 6, and 9.

are in uniform compression because that's one shot. So then my assumption is that it is resistant to embrittlement. So for hydrogen pipeline, for sour wells, critical. That is the fundamental advantage. And I think it applies to a linear. I just commissioned the demo number three for the linear and we'll have some sample wells by probably mid-summer of 2025. Okay.

I'm trying to catch up on my notes. It's a lot. It's a lot to digest. You kind of explained a bit there, but can you go into a bit more detail about how your solid state welding technique differs from traditional welds? You there. In how it works? Because it's audio only. Sorry, Paul.

Ah. You want this audio only? It's audio only, I'm afraid, yeah. Ah, okay, no problem. But at least you can see what it is. I can see, and it looks very impressive. Okay. So, industry has done the friction welding

where they push together and they rotate the heck out of it. Really fast, 9,000 RPM. And then it heats it up and then they push to expel the oxide and then they get a sharp horn coming out of it. It's a traditional profile. And then we had the MYAB by the Russians and I think it's Black and McDonald's who pioneered this. The pipe and then the magnetic field heated up, push.

but they still affect the zone in the fusion line. And then we had the induction coil on the outside heated up, and then they push by Baker. Several other attempts. And then friction stir welding, they're attempted to use a friction stir to rotate and slowly join the pipes using the rotation. But the problem is the exit point. How do you pull the pin out? So they have not resolved that. There's different solutions, but I don't think they're satisfactory. This technique...

for you and I in here is the brilliant of this invention from 20 plus years ago is you put a heating coil in between the work faces, Chris. Take it to hot working temperature in an inert environment. That's fundamental. So we're not melting, but just low melting. Take the coil out, push, and you turn slightly. So there's no oxide to expel because you're in an inert environment.

Push is to forge and to rotate slightly. It's not a complete rotation, just slightly. It's to shear the crystals. Because the minute the crystals touch, they want to grow. They want to bond. But then by shear, you're continuously breaking it down until the last milliseconds. Because they want to lock arms and pull the crystals. And then you keep breaking it. And so that's why we have a fine-grained, fine-grained, fine-grained. That's the fundamental difference.

So now, what is the problem with this particular technique, Chris? You tell me. All right. Now, my original thought was this will be perfect for pipeline. So for pipeline, you go from the wellhead, first joint, no problem. You do 100 miles of this stuff. One joint, push, turn. One joint, push, turn. But when you come to the last joint, you got 100 miles of pipe all done up. And you got a great big 30-ton valve on the other side. Right. How do you join them together? Hmm.

I know your audience can't see this, but let me pull this up. Let me pull it up here. Okay, great. So it is two induction coils at the same time with a coupler in between. Okay. So you heat both sides together, take the coils out, rotate the coupler. Right. So that's the first invention. And I try to interest people in the oil industry and all that, but-

Very resistant and no JV, no cooperation. So I said, okay, fine. Of course, I was heartbroken because I thought this would be perfect. And I went to one of the biggest manufacturers. I said, you know, here it is. This is, well, we wish you bad luck and we buy startups after they go broke all the time. So then lesson learned. And then I was introduced to the nuclear industry.

And because I know they're in a hot zone to weld one joint, it takes them four hours. Right. It's not just that, but the welder, he's dozed out for the year. He can't go back in again. And you can't, nuclear grade quality welders don't walk off the street like that. So then I said, hey, we can do that in a minute. What? So then they've been very more receptive to listening, to hearing. And that's been more friendly audience. Right.

So I applied to Pipeline to present to them in US, Europe, and Asia. And I was all turned down all at the same time by all three Pipeline associations. But I applied to present to the nuclear industry

And I have presented to many US, Canada, UK, France, Japan, Singapore, et cetera, for the nuclear industry. And so they're more receptive to change because they got bigger dollars and they got more critical issues. Especially with the SMRs and the molten salt and all that. They cannot afford to have a heat affected zone. So if we have a well that is no stress riser, resistant to embrittlement,

Significant advantage. Absolutely. Does it have applications in other sort of dangerous environments like undersea welding and it's basically anywhere that needs a weld? Yes, sir. No scaling limit. Right. Because one of the Australian companies says, can you do 42-inch? Because they want to join 42-inch offshore pipe in less than two minutes per join. Yeah, right. This was a few years ago, pre-2018 or 19.

They considered the fusion concept, but then the UK people chose to use low pressure EB. Okay. But with EB, as you know, radiation. So that was the limitation then. I don't think that got very far. But this oil company says, here's all the data. Here's all the contacts. You're welcome to use it. No restrictions. Go make it happen. I go, yes, sir. Thank you.

So we're talking to those people. And I think the technical issues for offshore 42-inch is resolved and the IPs are filed. Some are granted. Some are still pending. Okay. So it can be done. Excellent. So with your technique, eliminates the need for filler, filler metals, obviously. Yes, right. Presumably there's new fumes or other particles. Zero.

So how does that impact the strength and integrity of the world compared to conventional worlds? It's even better. It's even better. Because global standards are written to what industry can deliver. So like the offshore risers, they want it to be a better grade, a better quality, but industry can't deliver. So they don't change the regulations.

But they would love to make it a better, using higher strength steel, but ultra high and advanced high strength steel, problem is how to join it. That's their problem. So I haven't talked to them. We're starting to introduce ourselves to the offshore people right now. So no fume, no toxic oxides because we are in an inert environment. Okay.

And I think there's a lot more to do, but many of the IPs are not yet published. So I won't get too far into that, Chris. Okay, that's fair enough. So you mentioned scaling, the technology. What do you see as the key challenges, especially for high stakes sectors like you mentioned aerospace, nuclear, shipbuilding, etc.?

Money. Money, right. I'm doing all this on a shoestring. Right. But to scale, it takes mega millions and real engineering labs and facilities. We're doing this in a commercial industrial automation factory, but we need higher precision.

U.S. DOT, EWI, and the European Rail Commission each spent $5 million looking for a better well, but they started big. And so for their friction process, expensive. So for the rail, they started with a full 15-square-inch profile.

Because they want to replace the flash or they want to look for a better method to join rail instead of the flash butt. They want a better weld that doesn't give them the two soft dips on either side of it. Because the welding is cheap. It's the inspection and the repairs that's expensive. So for your audience in the rail industry, they know like about 40 millimeters apart, there's two soft dips after the flash butt.

And so they're inspecting the heck out of it because they know it wears. You know, when you come up, we have bainitic and pearlitic rail. So the wheels come across really hard rail, no problem, no problem. And we come to the first dip, clunk. And then it goes back to hard again. And the second dip, clunk. And then over time, a million ton miles, it wears. And they got to replace that. So they're spending a lot of money inspecting because they cannot afford to have it cracked.

So I think, so DOT spent, US spent $5 million. But the problem is when it fails, it takes months to repair anything because it's big bolts, big parts, heavy, heavy. So what I suggest is we start small. So this is what we've done, Chris. Okay. So we're joining small stuff, half inch ODs.

And then I'm joining zirconium. This is the zirconium tubing. Right. 0.5 millimeter. And this is the zirconium rod as a cap. Yeah, okay. So we joined a zirconium rod. Okay.

into zirconium tubing with 0.5 millimeter wall thickness. No burn through, and the weld is rock solid. Yeah, I bet. So that was presented to Fabtech in October. Dr. Gerlich and his team did the analysis, and they presented the data. So the weld, they did the pull test. The weld held, so we're pulling the wall material apart. Okay.

So that is significant. A first in the history of solid state. So I think we can make a significant contribution to the nuclear fuel rod because we can guarantee you 100% flawless. Because right now, the best they can give

publicly available data, 0.1% failure rate. But 0.1 for a million wells, for a million tubes is still significant. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And then accumulated over time, that's heavy. Absolutely. Yeah.

Can the technique be used for any metals? Not sure. Not sure. So far, titanium, zirconium, steel, stainless. And we joined, off the record, it's not official, we joined steel, stainless to aluminum. Right. And additive to stainless. That's another area that's worth exploring because for the aerospace, right now everything that's additive made

And when they want to join a valve or nozzle into the additive manufactured nozzle or rocket jet, rocket engine, it is still using filler material to weld that extra joint into it. Yeah. So I say, why not use solid state? You don't have a heat effect at all. You don't have a fusion line. But that's another market. So we...

I don't want to spread too thin. We focus on the nuclear and the rail, and that's it right now. Right. So the atomic level, it's not like kind of blending the edges together really, aren't you? Am I understanding correctly? Big time problem. Big time problem. Yeah. It's identical. But the fuse, you mean those are calling a fuel rod? It doesn't matter any. With the technique, when they're merging the two pieces together,

So the crystals are kind of squishing together, are they, on the walls of the material? There's a little bit more to that. Sorry? There's a little bit more to that, and the geometry is a little bit different. The IPs are filed, but it's pending. Okay, so yeah. So it opens up a whole different world in the world of manufacturing. Yeah, yeah. So I'm not going big. You're asking, you know, where can we scale? I cannot afford to scale big. We need industry help.

And I welcome their help. So what I can do is go small. So the smaller pipes, let's say the two inch with a thick wall. But if I can give you a flawless flat ID, that's worth a lot of money. Absolutely. Because the flush ID is worth something. So we're focusing on the smaller stuff where I can do something. And then we'll try to attract industry customers.

interest and we are we're talking to a fair amount of people now absolutely yeah prove your concept at a smaller scale and then build up yeah makes sense to me yeah but if i may just be off topic for a second yeah please rnd is not research and development is resist and deny sorry to your audience some of them who are in the rnd because that's a fact no comment

So you mentioned you target in nuclear industries pipelines with strict safety regulation requirements. So how does Fusering align with existing, you kind of touched this, but align with existing standards and what has been the response from industry leaders, if any, so far? Unbelievable. How come you didn't tell us? Who the heck are you? How come we never heard of this? So I said, well, we're small, we're getting out there, but we're getting out. So our quality is fantastic.

To use a more humble word, superior to existing regulation. It's a fact. They cannot deliver fine grain to fine grain to fine grain and a consistent uniform grain structure throughout. Whereas this technique delivers that.

So none of the regulations can write up to that level. But I think we're leapfrogging beyond what the regulators are allowing right now. So we will be changing. As I said to one of the regulators at API, the American Petroleum Institute, a few years ago, I said, sir, I'm going to make a lot of headaches for you because you're going to be rewriting the handbook. Well, who, what?

So you'll foresee the regulations having to catch up then in the future, basically. They're aware of it. Some are very helpful quietly because their bread and butter depends on the filler material people. Right. So I'm very thankful to the folks who are giving me a quiet guiding hand here and there. Because two words from a particular person will mean a whole different doorway for me.

and i'm very thankful i have to say in public uh i acknowledge them i know who they are and i'm very thankful thank you okay um so for for the actual industry the actual people doing the business end if you like um if it does become like big um would they need to be retrained in their in their skills well i'm sorry my wife has these um

Old grandfather clocks from her parents. They ding every half an hour. Drives me nuts, but they ding. So welders need to be retrained in any way. No, no, because all our guys at the shop, none of them weld ever. And I can't weld worth a damn. Darn. But they're joining metal steel together and they're joining zirconium and we're joining aluminum.

So these are the guys, this is stainless. You know, they have zero welding experience, but they know the numbers because it's automated, it's digitized. We punch in the numbers and it's automated. Okay. So presumably it could be done by an actual robot then completely autonomously. Absolutely. That's why I say we can weld in space, Chris. Why? Why? Because you don't need air?

Number one. Very good. Very good. Excellent. Number one. What's the other one? We don't need to add any other materials, I guess. No, no, no, no. Oh, I'm missing. Don't need a person. Semi-solid. Sorry? Semi-solid. Semi-solid. No splatter. Right. Yeah. Because we stay in the bubble gum stage. Right, right, right. So NASA, ESA, and all that are studying with electron beam plasma. Baloney. How the heck is the astronaut going to survive that? Hmm.

The sparks would kill them. Yeah, absolutely. It just doesn't make sense. In the physics point, you're asking the metal to be at minus 200 and you're coming across with electron beam and you're taking it to above melting. And then when the beam passes, you're asking that molten puddle to go back to minus 200 within seconds. You'll never survive. None of the metal that I know will survive that on earth anyways.

Yeah, it's a big ask, really, especially in zero-G as well. Again, you touched on this, but so how does this technique improve efficiency in terms of time, labor, and cost compared to traditional weld methods? You've sorted us. Each one of the welds are the same. We join on the skin effect. So no matter the size, we have a time limit.

So we, it'll all be with, it takes a lot of power. The bigger it is, the more power it takes. The less it is, the less power, but it's all the same principle. We have that semi-solid range and that's it. So for big and small, it's all the same timeframe. It's all automated. We, the critical thing is the matchup has to be high precision. It cannot be like, you know, we've got a bump here and a bump there, like friction, assuming that they will. Even friction is pretty high precision.

So when we get to be a high precision friction welding stage, we replace the rotation energy with induction coil energy. Okay. So some of the studies states that induction supplies over 95% of the energy required compared to friction. So we take all the friction equation out and induction and the shear just takes about 5% of the total energy. So our equipment footprint will be significantly smaller.

Okay. Now, how do you ensure precision of the actual join? Presumably you've got like a, I don't know, a rig to hold it together with you? Some kind of frame? It'll be exact same as the friction, except I think ours will not need to be as strong. Okay. But we don't need to rotate and shear. Right. And when they do the induction or the friction, they need to stop in a hurry. That's big force. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Interesting. Okay.

So beyond the applications you've shown so far, demonstrated so far, do you see the potential for fusing being adapted for other materials and industries? You've mentioned aerospace, but I'll say it again, like aerospace composites or even medical implants, medical sciences. We've been asked to join a Hasselhoit Inconel and some of the more exotic stuff like the HY80 and HY100.

So as mentioned before, it's not a confidential thing. I've stated that in public. We can join three, four, five inch plus thick submarine hull automatically with no flaw. Yes, sir. Because it works. I haven't done it yet, but we are talking to the interested parties. We're getting through finally because it's no secret.

The U.S. aims to build three submarines a year, right? Two Columbia and one Virginia. Public knowledge. Everybody knows that. The Chinese, the Russians, everybody knows each other's business. But the U.S. Navy is not delivering on that. They're behind. So it's published. So now they're saying it's not that we can do it. We don't need them. Now they're saying we know where we are. We need help. What's he got? And same with the nuclear industry.

much more receptive ear. It takes a while to break through. Of course, yeah. So I'm presenting to- Sorry. Sorry, I interrupted you. I'm presenting to Waste Management 2025 in Phoenix in March. So the theme I've presented this before to the American Nuclear Society and to the Japanese Nuclear Society is that we can well shut spent nuclear fuel containers. Huh. Safely.

Wow. Because right now, there are several technical challenges for the spent nuclear fuel. They don't like my word container. They like the word canister better. So I was like, okay, canister. It is how do you repair the well if it fails? Because it's still one millimeter at a time. There's a beginning and there's an end to that well. They said, but it's automated, but it's still one millimeter. So EPRI, the American Electrical Power, they've joined us six feet

OD by four or three inch wall using a high energy, but they don't tell you how long it takes to anneal it. Huge. And when I listened to it, I said, so how do you repair that? We don't talk about that, right? So that's still one of the questions outstanding. So I say ours depends only on three variables, induction power, push and turn. And no matter the size, if everything's lined up

And you know your power source is secure for the next 30 seconds, you're in. So could it be useful? I don't know, thinking outside the box, emergency repairs, battle damage? No, we're not good for emergency. We're not good for one-off, Chris, because it is time-consuming to set it up. So we're more geared up for repetitive, hundreds and thousands. But the good thing is, it's modular. Right. So if you have a submarine hull or a ship,

or a nuclear facility of something. For a given geometry in Las Vegas, in New York, in UK, in Busan, you use the exact same parameters. Okay. And it doesn't depend on the welder's skill set or how he feels that day. It doesn't depend on the weather, day, night, rain, or shine. It doesn't. It's modular because it's all self-contained. Right.

And if you have a joint on Mars or on the moon or in orbit, it's the exact same thing. Excellent. We have a cat. They're very loud. Yes. What's her name or his name? Princess. I call her the big chicken. Beautiful. Love cats.

So what are your next steps for advancing and commercializing the technology? And are there any upcoming partnerships, regulatory approvals or large scale deployments planned? I have presented to ASME 9 and ASME 31, ASME 3. So they are aware of it. They welcome it. But they want data.

Of course, yeah. Because the singular tubular weld is accepted into ASME 9 under code case 2799 already. Okay. So they say, we consider you part of that because you're two independent separate welds, but done at the same time. Right, okay. So we're getting in the process. I need to weld hundreds of these things to prove to them. The scale we're talking, we had an open house October 2024 weld.

That was about mostly nuclear engineers from around the area. And so we'll have more open houses from now. The next one's going to be early spring. And we're looking for partnerships. We have people waiting on the sidelines, all waiting to say, yeah, yeah, show me, show me, show me. Prove it, prove it, prove it. So we're proving it. But nobody wants to be the first. Everybody wants to be number two.

Yeah. So that's why I say the R&D is a resistant deny. Hopefully you'll get your first partnerships very soon then. I believe we have, but nobody wants to be. So anyways, I want to make sure we deliver on what we promise and we'll over deliver. I don't want to say, ah, gee whiz, we like it, but gee, almost. No, I want them to say, holy jeez, this is fantastic.

best connection we ever made. So that's what I want industry to do. It sounds like it'll come from the nuclear industry first then. It is. Yeah. Almost. Fingers crossed. Yeah. I'll pray for you. No, no, they've been very, very supportive, very encouraging. So we'll continue to work that way. Excellent. Looking to the future then, what do you think the future of welding will look like and where does Fuse Ring fit into that vision?

Okay, now here's a big mouthful, Chris, and I'm sorry to say, this will replace most filler welding material. Bold statement. Yes, sir. And I believe what's even, but it makes sense. We will unify the global welding standard, Chris, because we only depend on three variables, right?

So of course there's going to be different forging force, shear, the rate, how much, et cetera, et cetera. But we're not going to depend on how much chemical change is in the filler stick or what position you're going to weld that stick, how fast you're going to pull it or how fast you're going to pull it or push it. And it does not depend on how you're going to bake the welding rod for hydrogen and all that. We don't need all that. So I believe we will have a chance to unify a good portion

We'll standardize the global welding standard. Because right now we've got ASME, AWS, DNB, Lloyds, the Japanese, the Chinese, you name it, there's another regulatory agency. Everybody is slightly different. Absolutely. I'm sure that will come as good news to many welders out there. Well, they're concerned about losing their job. And I say it's going to give you a better security because more options are going to open up.

Absolutely. Definitely. Because they're being stepped on right now by everybody. Ah, it's a fault of the welder. Soon he's going to say, hey, listen, I did my job. Here it is. And here's electronic documentation in real time. Yeah. And he's going to be better paid because he's going to produce a better weld faster.

Excellent. Absolutely. Well, that's all my questions. Is there anything else you'd like to add that we haven't touched? No, I'm so glad we have this opportunity, Chris. Thank you for the time. It's our pleasure. Well, with that then, thank you for your time, Paul. That was very, very interesting. Also, don't forget to subscribe to IE Plus for premium insights and exclusive content. Thank you.