Detroit Diesel Remanufacturing West (DDRW) specializes in remanufacturing engine components including turbochargers. When customers’ diesel turbochargers wear out, DDRW removes the turbine assembly and reconditions it, if possible. In many cases they are unable to refurbish the turbine assemblies and must replace them with new, expensive assemblies. Rather than purchase new assemblies, DDRW would like to remanufacture the assemblies that were previously recycled, reducing the cost of remanufacturing. Although they are able to refurbish damaged wheels and machine shafts to the needed specifications, they have no proven method of joining refurbished wheels to new machined shafts.

DDRW asked BYU Capstone team 13 to develop the process of joining wheels and shafts through friction welding. The turbine assemblies are made from two parts joined by friction welding: a turbine wheel and a machined shaft. Once welded and machined, the assemblies are used in turbochargers at speeds of up to 80,000 rpm. Achieving near-perfect balance is critical to the functionality of the turbochargers. The team successfully developed friction welding operating parameters for the provided turbine wheels with sufficient documentation to determine parameters for additional wheel sizes, modified the machine to hold the current wheels and be adaptable to holding additional wheel sizes, created an operating manual, and developed testing procedures to verify weld integrity and accurate balance.