Some Traits and Applications of

Laser Welding
Reported by ofweek laser, What is laser? The world's first laser beam is
produced in 1960 by the use of flashbulb stimulating ruby crystalline
grain. Limited by the thermal capacity of the grain, the pulsed beams is
short and the frequency is very low. Although the instantaneous pulse peak
can reach up to 106W, it still belongs to low energy output.

Source:tamu.edu
Laser technology adopts the beams of light generated by the reflection
of laser from polariscope and congregates the beams in focusing device
to generate beams with enormous energy. Once the focus is approaching,
the workpieces will be melt or vapored in some milliseconds. This opens
up a new welding application domain for high power CO2 and high power YAG
laser. The key of laser welding equipment is high power laser, including
solid laser and gas laser. Solid laser is the so called Nd:YAG laser. Nd
is a rare earth elements and YAG represents Yttrium Aluminum Garnet, with
similar crystal structure as ruby. The wavelength of Nd:YAG laser is
1.06m. It can produce beam transmitted by fiber, so it can simplify beam
delivery system, which is suitable in flexible manufacturing systems and
remote working as well as high welding precision workpieces. Nd:YAG laser

of 3-4 KW output is commonly used in automobile industry. Gas laser is

the so-called CO2 laser. Its working medium is molecule gases which can
generate iraser of 10.6m in average. It can work continuously and output
very high power; the standard laser power is between 2-5 KW.
The major traits of laser welding are as following:
1. The welding is fast and deep with little deformation.
2. It can work in room temperature and disparity conditions with simple
equipment and device. For example, the laser beam will not offset; laser
welding can be really carried out in vacuum, air or any gas environment,
or even through glass or any transparent material.
3. It can weld refractory materials as titanium and quartz and anisotropic
materials with good effects.
4. When welding, depth-to-width ratio can reach to 5:1 and the highest
can reach up to 10:1.
5. It can applied in microwelding. Slight flare can be generated by focused
laser beams which can positioning precisely and be applied in mass
automatic production of micro and small workpieces' installation and
welding.
6. It is flexible in welding areas that is difficult to access. Especially
in recent years, the adoption of optical fiber transmission in YAG laser
processing technology has greatly promoted the popularization and
application of laser welding technology.
7. Beam split is easy to be realized by time and space and multiple beam
can be processed all at once, providing conditions for more precise
welding.
However, there are some limits of laser welding:
1. It requires high assembly accuracy for weld and it should has no obvious
deviation of beam on workpieces. It is because that the flare is too small
and the welding line is too narrow. If the assembly accuracy and beam
position cannot meet the requirements, it is easy to make weld defect.
2. The cost and initial investment on laser and the relevant systems are
high.

Resource : avio
Technological parameter of laser welding:
(1) Power density
Power density is one of the key parameters in laser processing. When the
power density is relatively high, the surface would be heated to boiling
point in microseconds, thus generate mass vaporization. As a result, high
power density is good for material removal processing such as punching,
cutting and carving. When the power density is relatively low, it would
take some microseconds to meet the boiling point, the bottom can reach
the melting point before vaporization occurs, thus a good melt welding
is successfully formed. So the power density ranges from 104~106W/cm2 in
conductive laser welding.
(2) Laser pulse shape
Laser pulse shape is an important question in laser welding, especially
for foil welding. When high strength laser beam reaches the material
surface, 60~98% of the laser energy will be lost by reflection and the
reflectivity is changeable by the temperature of the material surface.
The reflectivity of metal can vary greatly in a laser pulse period.
(3) Laser pulse width
Laser pulse width is an important parameter to distinguish material
removal and material melting; it is also a key parameter to decide the
cost and volume of processing equipment.
(4) Influence of defocusing amount on weld quality
There are two ways of defocus: positive defocus and negative defocus. It
is positive defocus when focal plane is above the workpieces, vise versa.
According to geometry optical theory, when positive and negative
defocusing plane equals to welding plane, the power densities are almost
the same in the corresponding panels, but the actual laser pools have
different forms. It can achieve larger depth of fusion when it is negative
defocus.

Application field of laser welding

Laser welding machine has wide application in manufacturing industry,
powder metallurgy field, automobile industry, electronics and some other
fields.

Source : demarlaser
Application of laser welding in automobile industry
Volkswagen AG has adopted laser welding in car roof of brands like AudiA6,
GolfA4 and Passat. BMW and GM have used laser welding in top of the car
frame while Mercedes-Benz has applied laser welding in drive disk assembly.
Except for laser welding, other laser technologies have be applied as well.
Companies like Volkswagen GM, Benz and Nissan have used laser to cut
covering parts while FIAT and Toyota have adopted laser for coating engine
exhaust valve; Volkswagen has used laser for surface hardening on engine
camshaft. Domestic vehicle models like Passat, Polo, Touran, Audi,

Dongfeng Peugeot and Focus have adopted laser welding technology.

Independent automobile brands like Brilliance, Chery and Geely have
adopted laser welding as well.
Improvement and development of new laser welding technology
Laser welding technology is continuously developing along with the
progress of the time. The following three technologies can help expanding
laser's application scop and enhancing the automatic control level of
laser welding.
1. filler wire laser welding
Laser welding generally doesn't fill wires but has high requirement on
assembling clearance, which is hard to be guaranteed thus limits the
application scope. Filler wire laser welding method has lower requirement
on assembling clearance. For example, if the aluminum alloy plate is of
2 mm's thickness, the clearance must be zero for a good shaping. When
adopting 1.6mm welding wire as filler metal, it can form good shape even
the clearance is 1.0 mm. Besides, filler wire can be used for adjusting
chemical components and multi-layer welding on thick board.
2. Beam rotation laser welding
By the adoption of laser beam rotation laser welding methods, demands on
welding assembly and beam centering are reduced greatly.
3. On-line detection and control of laser welding quality
It is becoming a hot researching topic on detecting laser welding process
by using plasma such as light, sound and electric charge; some researches
have achieved closed-loop control.