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As automotive designs add more aluminum to lightweight their vehicles, friction stir welding (FSW) will likely become a principal joining process in the industry. FSW is a solid-state joining process which avoids many of the traditional problems of welding aluminum alloys such as hot cracking, porosity and solidification shrinkage. These attributes enable high preforming friction stir welded joints of cast, 5XXX, 6XXX, 7XXX or mixed aluminum alloy combinations. Although FSW technologies have advanced to support high volume applications and have been applied in current automotive parts, its inability for nondestructive evaluation (NDE) increases the cost to manufacture friction stir welded parts. Current state of the art NDE methods for FSW are either ultrasound or radiographic technologies which add complexity to manufacturing lines and additional costs to FSW production. Many have researched ways to reduce NDE costs by using measured forces of the FSW process.