Some Useful Detailed Notes on Laser

Welding Technology
Laser welding emerges with the development of science and technology in recent
years. What is laser welding? And what are the advantages and disadvantages of laser
welding?

First, what is laser welding? 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.
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 workpiece 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 weldment 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.
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 mental 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 palne,
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 has wide application in manufacturing industry, powder metallurgy
field, automobile industry, electronics and some other fields.
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 scope
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

Welding by rolling laser beams can greatly reduce the demands on welding assembly
and beam centering.
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.