To my untrained eye it don’t seem to have much/if any penetration into the base Ti. Are they TIG braising or just ‘normal’ TIG at a lower amps? Also, the joints don’t seem that tight? (only a single image, so might not mean anything).
If this is the case could the same be achieved using a low power (circa 1000W) laser welding system with appropriate Argon shielding?
Agree those roots look a bit underpenetrated to me. Really it just comes down to how much metal is actually there. You don’t need to go right through the root if you have a big enough fillet. But those fillets are small as well.
I think this is more likely to be welding than brazing. If it is brazing, then the fillets are definitely too small (braze filler is typically weaker than the base metal, which is why you need a much larger fillet, or to cover a large area as with lugs).
Laser welding probably will replace TIG altogether eventually. It has a higher power density. But the set-ups I’ve seen are all “MIG-like” with a wire feeder, or people are just doing fusion welds. The setups are pretty bulky as well. So I don’t think it would be easy to laser-weld a bike frame with what’s available now.
And since we’re still doing oxy-acetylene brazing on bike frames (nobody still does this in any other industry) I expect we will also carry on doing TIG for long after it’s become a vintage tech
