From hard to easy.

You have to design a leak-tight component, with complex configuration. You can plan it as a cored casting...

It will be lead-tight, but a cored casting is an expensive one. An open casting is a lot cheaper to make. So why not make it that way?

By using brazing, you've replaced the complex cored casting with a simple open casting and a metal stamping. Machining is easier, and brazing's capillary action assures you of a leak-tight bond.

From casting to stock parts.

Let's say you're designing a base plate with a threaded coupling. You can make it in one piece as a casting...

Material cost is low, but material choice is limited. Weight is excessive, machining extensive, and the finished part may be weak and brittle. Consider making the "part" as a brazed assembly of stock elements...

Machining is minimal--the base plate is a stamping and the coupling a screw machine part. Weight is down to the bone, too, because the thickness is only where it's needed, in the treaded coupling. Material can be matched to function. And the assembly will undoubtedly be stronger than the casting.

Two metals are better than one.

The ability of brazing to join dissimilar metals is helpful in many applications, but in some instances it's quite critical. A classic example is the carbide metal-cutting tool. The tool could be made entirely of carbide. But carbide is expensive. What's more, though carbide is fine for the cutting tip, you don't really want to use it for the tool shank. It's too hard and brittle to withstand shock. Brazing solve the problem...

By brazing, you've reduced material cost--obviously. But even more--you're now using metals perfectly suited to their functions. Hard carbide at the cutting edge, and shock-resistant tool steel for the shank.

Freedom for the designer.

We started this section with a question: "When do you think brazing?" And we've indicated, through just a few of the many possible examples, that you think brazing at the beginning--at the design stage. The fact is--brazing liberates the designer. It enables him to design for function, for light weight, for selective use of metals, and for production economy, The designer who's fully aware of the possibilities of brazing thinks less and less in terms of castings, forgings and parts machined from solid metal, He thinks more and more in terms of brazed assemblies, which combine plate or sheet stock, standard tubing and bar, stampings and screw machine parts, Assemblies based on the use of such elements are generally lighter in weight, less expensive to fabricate, and at least equal in performance to metal parts made as monolithic units.