Advantages and disadvantages of laser welding - Gentec-EO

Laser precision allows for better quality welds, faster throughput, reduced post-processing costs and access to new domains of application.

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The main drawback of laser welding is the hefty price tag for the equipment. Our accurate measurement solutions help you maximize the ROI of this investment.

Let’s discuss about the main advantages and disadvantages of laser welding.

Advantages of laser welding

Minimal thermal impact on the surrounding surfaces

Welding, both traditional and laser-based, implies heat delivery at the junction between two surfaces. The melted metals mix and, after they’ve cooled, form a strong bond, effectively joining the two components together.

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The problem with the traditional methods is that they do not deliver this heat only at the weld seam, but also in the surrounding material. The result is bending, stress, and other negative impacts on the material near the welds.

Lasers on the other hand, have enormous power density. In other words, they can deliver their heat extremely locally at the seam, leaving the surrounding materials in better condition.

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Decreased post-weld processing costs

Laser welds are extremely clean. Usually, they are so clean that they require no subsequent grinding, resulting in a significant reduction in post-processing costs.

Having such cosmetic welds also helps give the product a more premium look, giving a great first impression with products that are destined for end-users

Lasers increase weld speed

Lasers can weld many times faster (up to 5 to 10 times faster!) than traditional methods. Even without considering the decrease in post-processing, it’s easy to understand that faster weld speeds mean a quicker turnaround time and increased productivity.

Versatility

Laser welding is extremely versatile. Different laser setups can weld just about anything and everything: thick steel plates for the shipping industry, precious metals for jewelry, dissimilar metals like aluminum and steel, or the copper contacts on electric car batteries.

There have even been some successful attempts (though this is still experimental) to weld ceramics, a notoriously hard-to-weld class of materials.

Disadvantages of laser welding

High upfront cost

All of these advantages come at a cost, literally. The initial acquisition cost of laser setups can easily be double or triple the cost of traditional systems.

However, the per-unit cost is lowered. If you have sufficiently high volumes, the investment pays dividends.

Low gap tolerance

Precision being the trademark of laser welding comes with a bit of a drawback, because that precision means that bad workpiece fit-up will really harm the quality of the welding.

This decrease in gap-tolerance means you need to make sure your upstream processes/suppliers can reliably meet strict tolerance levels.

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Is laser welding right for you?

How does a laser welder work exactly ?

Aplogies..

So how does it work?

Ever burn things with a magnifying glass as a kid? Same principle. There is a laser source,( or two in my case) in the main part of it, along with all the necessary controls, computer and water cooling plant. Mine is rather specialised, specifically made for micro welding and tool and die repair. It uses a fibre laser, so this is fed up to the actual welding part of it in a special shielded fibreoptic cable.

The head unit comprises of a microscope made by Leica, that you look into. There are cross hairs in the right eye piece for aiming where the laser will fire. Just underneath there ,there is a prism that diverts the image to a camera, so, you can watch what you are welding on a pc screen. This image is in monochrome, same as the image you see through the eyepieces. How and why? Below the camera is a thick dichromic glass filter. This filters out all the laserly goodness that fries what you are welding and would do the same to your eyeballs if it were not there. Below this filter is the prism where the unfocused laser beam gets turned 90 degrees down towards what you are welding. It is focused through a couple of precision ground glass lenses. It is set up in such a manner that when the image you see through the eyepieces is perfectly in focus, the focal length of the laser beam is perfect for welding.You adjust the focus by moving the welding head closer to,or further away from what you want to weld.

You fire the laser by either a hand held switch or by a foot pedal depending on your application. You have the option for single shot or continuous. All the parameters are set via the computer touch screen. Mine has five memory settings , so you can store your settings for future use. I use 0,4mm wire or thinner, hand fed like Tig. For alot of my applications, welding dissimilar metals, no filler is required.

You do run into problems with the really thin stuff as you cannot back the part up with anything metallic like you would with mig or Tig, ie stick a bit of copper underneath where you are welding as it fuses it to what’s above.You can weld pretty much any metal to another metal. .( stainless steel to aluminium, copper to aluminium) . All sorts of crazy things you cannot do conventionally .A lot of my time prototyping some of the really thin parts has been spent finding ways to back up the molten weld pool. Welding 0,25mm wire to 0,03mm sheet has been a big challenge as the amount of energy required to melt 0,25mm wire totally obliterates the 0,03mm sheet. I have come up with a viable solution. Again, due to the nature of some of the parts, there are Nda’s in place so I cannot elaborate further.