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WELDING RESEARCH

CurrentIndependent Metal Transfer by Using

Pulsed Laser Irradiation Part 2: Affecting Factors
Experiments were conducted to examine the effects of laser positioning, laser pulse
waveform, and arc parameters on successful pulse transfer and deflection minimization

BY J. XIAO, S. J. CHEN, G. J. ZHANG, AND Y. M. ZHANG

ABSTRACT
The ideal currentindependent metal transfer characterized by ensured robust droplet
detachment at a relatively small size at any reasonable low current, which can sustain the
arc, has been successfully realized in the first part of this study by applying a highpower
density pulsed fiber laser to irradiate the droplet neck. The desired onedropletperlaser
pulse (ODPP) mode was ensured. The droplet flying trajectory deflected from the wire
axial due to the use of a single laser. This second part of the study focuses on how relevant
parameters influence the metal transfer behavior, especially the droplet deflection that af
fects the controllability of bead formation. To facilitate the study, the relevant parameters
were categorized into three major types: laser positioning, laser pulse waveform, and arc
parameters. A series of experiments was conducted to examine their effects on successful
ODPP transfer and deflection minimization. In particular, the optimal laser incident point
and angle for most submissive droplet detachment and smallest droplet deflection were
first determined. Secondly, the minimums of the laser peak power and duration for stable
ODPP were determined. Finally, the droplet deflections under different welding currents
in the desirable low range, as well as different torch orientations and arc lengths, were
measured and analyzed.

KEYWORDS
Gas Metal Arc Welding (GMAW) Process Control Metal Transfer
Droplet Laser Irradiation

Introduction
In conventional gas metal arc welding (GMAW), the metal transfer mode
is dominantly determined by the welding current. Relatively low currents
produce short-circuiting or large drop
globular transfer, which typically generates spatter and unstable arcs. To
produce more desirable drop spray
transfers, a current higher than the
spray transition current is needed. Unfortunately, such currents cause signif-

icant increases in heat input and arc

pressure (Refs. 14). In particular, as
found by Mendez and his associates,
droplet temperature reaches a minimum at the transition from globular to
spray transfer by currents slightly lower than the transition current (Ref. 5).
As such, the properties of the resultant
process, including, but not limited to,
metal transfer, arc, and heat input,
strongly depend on the current that is
used to detach the droplet. An ideal
GMAW process calls for an ideal metal

transfer controllability (droplet detachment ability) that is current independent, i.e., can detach the droplet at any
current in the reasonable range as demanded by the application. Such ideal
current-independent metal transfer
control is especially crucial for advanced applications like welding of ultrathin sheets and additive manufacturing that demand precise process
controls.
As has been reviewed in the first
part of this study, many innovations,
such as surface tension transfer (STT),
cold metal transfer (CMT), and ultrasonic assisted GMAW, have achieved
significant improvements on metal
transfer control by electrical, magnetical, mechanical, and radiating ways
(Refs. 619). However, they all are still
far away from the ultimate/ideal goal:
current-independent metal transfer,
i.e., detaching droplets of the desired
size at any current in the reasonable
range especially at reasonably low current for free flight transfer.
A recent innovation having the potential toward this ultimate goal for
the ideal metal transfer control is laserenhanced GMAW, proposed and continuously studied at the University of
Kentucky. Huang explored the use of a
direct diode laser (862 W, 14 1-mm
focus line) to irradiate the droplet
(Refs. 2022). However, the enhancement on the metal transfer controllability is quite weak due to the very low

J. XIAO and S. J. CHEN (sjchen@bjut.edu.cn) are with the Engineering Research Center of Advanced Manufacturing Technology for Automo
tive Components, Ministry of Education, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, China. J. XIAO is also with the Institute for Sustainable Man
ufacturing, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Ky. G. J. ZHANG is with the State Key Laboratory of Advanced Welding and Joining, Harbin In
stitute of Technology, China. Y. M. ZHANG (yuming.zhang@uky.edu) is with the Institute for Sustainable Manufacturing and Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Ky.

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Fig. 2 Illustration of laser setup parameters.

Fig. 1 Sketch of experimental system.

laser power density. Shao continued

the effort in this direction, but the focus was to track the droplet in real
time in order to apply the laser pulse
at the right time to the right location
(Refs. 23, 24).
As a further significant evolution in
this direction, the first part of this
study used a pulsed fiber laser and
focused it into a 0.5-mm-diameter
spot to irradiate the droplet. Currentindependent metal transfer was successfully obtained by applying a
1200-W laser pulse for 5 ms (Ref. 25).
Although the welding current was
only 40 A, the detached droplet diameter was approximately only 1 mm.
Since the sum of the electromagnetic
force, plasma dragging force, and
droplet gravitational force was much
smaller than the retaining force, i.e.,
the surface tension, it is apparent
that the detachment was dominated
by the laser pulse rather than the
welding current. The droplet detachment was thus independent of the
current. The metal transfer frequency
was exactly the same with the laser
pulse frequency. The metal transfer
mode was exactly ODPP.
Although current-independent
metal transfer has been successfully
obtained by applying a high-powerdensity laser pulse, the parameters
were experimentally determined without systematic understanding of how
relevant parameters and resultant
transfer are related and how the parameters should be determined. As
such, this second part of the study is

Fig. 3 Illustration of laser incident point on droplet.

Fig. 4 Metal transfer with laser aimed at droplet neck, 60deg incident angle.

devoted to gaining such a systematic

understanding through experiments
and analysis. The major relevant parameters to be studied and analyzed
include the following three types:
Laser Positioning Parameters, including the laser incident point on the
droplet and laser incident angle .
They are the two most important parameters since they influence the laser
recoil force and droplet reaction.
Laser Waveform Parameters, including the laser peak power, peak duration, and pulse frequency. They directly determine if the droplet can be
detached by the laser pulse. The minimum laser peak power and duration

need to be determined to ensure the

detachment will be successful while
still minimizing the needed laser pulse
energy.
Welding Arc Parameters, including
the welding current, gun angle, and
arc length. These parameters all significantly influence the welding process
of conventional GMAW. It is thus also
crucial to understand how they affect
the laser-droplet interaction behavior.

Experimental System
Figure 1 shows the experimental
configuration the same as the one
used in the first part of this study. The
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Table 1 Laser Incident Angle in

Experiments 48

Fig. 5 Metal transfer with the laser aimed at different positions on the droplet.
A Laser aimed at droplet midtop position; B laser aimed at droplet wiretip position;
C laser aimed at droplet mid position; D laser aimed at droplet midbottom position.

fiber laser is operated at the pulsed

mode and focused into a 0.5-mm-diameter spot. The power source runs at
the constant-current (CC) mode. Other fixed experimental parameters include the arc length (6 mm), contact
tip to work-piece distance (13 mm),
wire (0.8-mm- diameter ER70S-6
wire), shield gas (pure argon, 15
L/min), and travel speed (3 mm/s).
The laser installation is shown in Fig.
2. Given the laser position, the laser
incident point on the droplet can be
open-loop controlled by matching with
the arc length. A machine-vision system was used to monitor the droplet
position and, thus, to double ensure
the laser was aimed/applied at the desired position. Unless otherwise specified, a 1200 W 5ms laser pulse was

applied to the droplet neck at 25 Hz

while the tilting angle of the gun was
zero; the welding current was constant
at 80 A; and metal transfer images are
shown with a 1-ms time interval. The
first frame of each figure corresponds
exactly to the starting moment of the
laser pulse.

Results and Discussion

Laser Positioning Parameters
Laser Incident Point. The optimal
laser incident point should be the first
to determine. The laser droplet interaction mode would be totally different
when the laser is aimed at different positions on the droplet, as shown in Fig.

196-s WELDING JOURNAL / JUNE 2016, VOL. 95

No.

Laser Incident Angle

(deg)

4
5
6
7
8

85
75
60
45
30

3. The first part of this study conducted

a preliminary comparison on the resultant metal transfer with two different
incident points: droplet neck and midtop position. Figure 4 shows the desired submissive metal transfer can be
achieved by aiming the laser at the
droplet neck. Figure 5A, already presented in Ref. 23, shows the metal
transfer becomes violent and a slight
droplet burst is induced when the laser
incident point is slightly moved downward to the droplet mid-top. The optimal laser incident point has already
been determined to be the droplet neck
in the first part of this study. Only
when the laser spot is aimed at the
droplet neck can the metal transfer be
submissive without laser-induced explosion, and the detaching ability of the
given laser pulse is maximized.
For this paper, the laser aiming
point was moved upward/downward
to further examine/analyze the effect
of the incident location. Experiments
13 were thus conducted with the
laser incident angle set at 60 deg for
three additional incident locations
wire tip, droplet mid, and mid-bottom
positions. Figure 5BD shows the typical metal transfer in Experiments 13
with the laser being aimed at these additional locations.
One can see in Frame 4 of Fig. 5B
that the laser pulse aimed at the wire
tip does dig a shallow groove on the
solid wire but cannot penetrate the
wire. It is interesting to note that the
laser impulse to the wire seems to
have been conducted to the liquid
droplet and thus excited the droplet
into oscillation. In particular, Frame 7
corresponds to the moment the
droplet reaches its maximum elongation, after which the droplet springs
back to the wire tip and the oscillation
starts. The detailed scientific mechanism on such excitation of droplet oscillation is currently not quite clear

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Fig. 7 Effect of laser incident angle on

metal transfer.

Fig. 6 Metal transfer under different laser incident angles: A = 85 deg; B = 75

deg; C = 60 deg; D = 45 deg; E = 30 deg.

and needs more study.

When the laser was aimed on the
droplet midposition, one can see from
Fig. 5C that the droplet was instantly
broken through by the laser such that
the droplet surface deformed intensively. The droplet was finally detached but with significant offset from
the wire axial direction, similar to the
repelled globular transfer in CO2 welding. In this way, the laser detaching
mechanism no longer lies in the laser
cutting effect, but the laser repelling
effect. Nonuniform bead formation is
typically expected in this case.
When the incident point moves further downward to the droplet midbottom, the droplet is violently repelled by the laser pulse. However,
since the incident point is too low, the
repelled droplet may deviate from the
laser irradiation, such that the laser

recoil force no longer exists after an

initial droplet deflection and the
droplet thus cannot be detached.
The experiment results of this subsection further prove that the droplet
neck is the optimal laser incident
point for obtaining the desired droplet
detachment. Thereby, the laser pulse
was aimed at the droplet neck as the
default in the experiments that follow.
Laser Incident Angle. Another important laser positioning parameter is
the laser incident angle that determines the laser penetration path and
direction inside the droplet. Experiments 48 were thus conducted to verify its effect on the metal transfer. The
laser incident angle changed from 30
to 85 deg, as shown in Table 1. The 90deg laser incident angle meant the
laser beam was perpendicular with the
wire. Typical metal transfer under

these different laser incident angles is

shown in Fig. 6AE.
Since the first part of this study
verified the direction of the laser recoil
force is coincident with the normal of
the irradiated local surface of the
droplet, the initial direction of the
laser recoil force at the very starting
moment of the laser pulse during Experiments 48 was believed to be the
same. However, the laser digging and
penetrating direction indeed changed
with the incident angle. Once an initial
groove formed at the droplet neck, the
laser recoil direction consequently
changed. As Fig. 6A, E shows, the
droplet surface deformations under
85- and 30-deg incident angles are apparently different. It can be seen the
laser tried to cut through the droplet
main body rather than the droplet
neck when a 30-deg incident angle was
used. The metal transfer thus looks
not sufficiently submissive, because
the intensive laser-induced vaporization inside the liquid droplet resulted
in a light explosion. In this sense, a
too-small incident angle is not recommended for use.
Figure 7 shows the measured
droplet velocity and deflection from
Experiments 48. It can be seen the
droplet deflection first decreased before the incident angle reached 45 deg,
because the radial component of the
laser recoil force increased. However,
when the laser incident angle was as

Table 2 Droplet Deection and Velocity Measured from Experiments 14 and 15

No.

Laser Pulse Frequency

Droplet Deection (deg)

Droplet Velocity (mm/s)

14
15

10
20

19
37

326
463

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Fig. 8 Metal transfer under different laser peak powers: A 90%; B 60%.
Fig. 9 Effect of laser peak power on drop
deflection and velocity.

Fig. 10 Typical metal transfer with different laser pulse frequences: A 10 Hz; B 20 Hz.

small as 30 deg, the laser was no

longer aimed at the droplet neck but at
the droplet main body after the initial
droplet deformation/elongation occurred. The focused laser beam was
thus surrounded by the relatively thick
liquid droplet.
Due to the effect of the surface
tension and the gravitational force of
the liquid metal above the laser penetrating path, the laser could not dig
the droplet surface into a groove
shape and then cut it off. Further,
with a smaller laser incident angle,
the droplet deflection tended to make
the droplet move away from the laser
irradiation, thus further weakening
the laser digging effect in the laser incident direction. The radial component of the laser recoil force became
the primary, which consequently increased the droplet deflection. On the
other hand, the velocity of the detached droplet measured from Experiments 48 did not demonstrate sig-

nificant differences. With respect to

the smaller droplet deflection, the optimal range of laser incident angle
was determined to be 4560 deg. If
not otherwise specified, the laser incident angle was fixed at 45 deg as
the default in the experiments that
follow.

Laser Pulse Waveform

After the optimal laser positioning
parameters were determined, the next
task was to determine the minimum
laser peak power and duration that
could achieve robust ODPP metal
transfer. Given the laser spot diameter, the laser peak power determined
the laser power density, thus determining the amplitude of the laser recoil pressure that determined if the
droplet neck could be effectively dug,
while the laser peak duration determined if the laser had an adequate
time to penetrate the whole wire and

Table 3 Varying Parameters in Experiments 1719

No.

Current (A)

Laser Pulse Frequency (Hz)

17
18
19

40
80
120

10
20
30

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cut off the droplet neck. Therefore, the

effect of laser peak power and duration are analyzed in this subsection.
Laser Peak Power. Experiments
911 used laser peak power of 90%
(1400 W), 60% (950 W), and 45% (700
W), respectively. Other parameters
were the same as those in Experiment
7. The result of Experiment 7 thus was
used as the reference for comparison.
High-speed images show the droplet
could not be robustly detached when
only 45% of the laser peak power was
used. Approximately 25% of the
droplets could not be detached by a single laser pulse. Hence, Fig. 8 only shows
the metal transfer under 60% and 90%
of the laser peak power. Droplet deflection and velocity are measured and
shown in Fig. 9. It can be seen that
droplet deflection under 90% and 75%
of the laser peak power is quite close.
However, when the power of the laser
pulse was reduced to 60% of the peak
power, the droplet deflection significantly increased by 147% to 42 deg;
meanwhile, the droplet velocity also
significantly decreased. Overall, the
droplet velocity /deflection
increased/decreased as the laser pulse
power increased but the increase/decrease was getting slower. The preferred result is the combination of a
moderate droplet velocity ensuring the
detachment and relatively small deflections ensuring the bead formation.
From this point of view, among the
three levels of pulse power, 75% (1200
W) was considered moderate.
Laser Peak Duration. In fact, one
can see from Fig. 6 that almost all the
droplets were fully detached from the
wire tip after 5 ms of the laser pulse
application. Even using 90% of laser
peak power for ensuring definitely ad-

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C
Fig. 12 Droplet deflection under different
welding currents.

Fig. 11 Metal transfer under different welding currents: A Welding current I = 120 A,
laser pulse frequency 33 Hz; B welding current I = 80 A, laser pulse frequency 20 Hz;
C welding current I = 40 A, laser pulse frequency 10 Hz.

the droplet deflections look increased

when the laser pulse frequency was increasing. The droplet velocity and deflection in Experiments 14 and 15 are
measured and shown in Table 2 for
quantitative analysis. It can be seen
that the droplet deflection and velocity both increased significantly when
the laser pulse frequency was increased from 10 to 20 Hz, as can be
predicted by the theorem of momentum, given the laser pulse, the smaller
droplet mass, the larger droplet velocity, and thus the larger deflection.

Welding Arc Parameters

Fig. 13 Illustration of weld gun orientation: A Gun tilting left; B gun tilting right.

equate laser recoil force, it still took at

least 4 ms to fully detach the droplet,
as can be seen from Fig. 8A. These results imply that 5 ms should be the
minimum laser peak duration to ensure a robust droplet detachment.
However, it was still in the authors interest to know what would happen if a
shorter laser pulse was used. Experiments 12 and 13 were thus conducted
with 3- and 4-ms laser pulse duration.
The laser pulse power was set at 90%
to guarantee the laser recoil pressure
would be sufficiently high. Experimental results show almost no droplets
could be detached by a laser pulse with
3-ms duration. Instead, the droplets
could be detached by the laser pulse
with 4-ms duration with approximately
75% rate. Hence, 5-ms laser pulse duration was confirmed to be the minimum
to ensure a stable current-independent
droplet detachment for the wire used.

Laser Pulse Frequency. Since the

metal transfer mode in pulsed lasercontrolled GMAW is actually ODPP
(one drop per laser pulse) transfer, the
laser pulse frequency exactly determines the metal transfer frequency.
Given the welding current, the laser
pulse frequency actually determines
the time for the droplet to grow.
Hence, the effect of the laser frequency on the metal transfer is actually the
effect of the droplet mass at the detaching moment. Experiments 1416
used 10-, 20-, and 30-Hz laser pulse
frequency, respectively. The welding
current was fixed at 40 A.
It is found that the metal transfer
in Experiment 16, with 30-Hz laser
pulse frequency, became unstable.
Typical metal transfers in the Experiments 14 and 15 are shown in Fig.
10AC. It can be seen that the detached droplet was getting smaller and

Welding current, gun orientation,

and arc length are the three crucial parameters in conventional GMAW. It
was expected they might also influence the laser pulse-controlled metal
transfer to a certain extent. Therefore,
a series of experiments was conducted
in this subsection to explore the effect
of these parameters on the metal
transfer, step by step.
Welding Current. The welding current determines the electromagnetic
force acting on the droplet. Although
the electromagnetic force under a low
current is not sufficient to detach the
droplet by itself, it does produce certain effects on the laser-dominated
metal transfer process. Table 3 shows
the welding current used in Experiments 1719. The laser pulse frequency changed with the current in order
to control the droplet growing period
such that the initial droplet size at the
laser pulse emitting moment was approximately the same in these three
experiments.
Figure 11AC shows typical metal
transfer behaviors in Experiments
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Fig. 14 Metal transfer under different gun orientations: A Gun tilting left; B gun
tilting right.
Fig. 15 Effect of gun orientation on
droplet deflection.

Fig. 16 Laser pulsecontrolled metal transfer with short arc.

1719. The presented high-speed image sequences show the droplet deflection tended to decrease with the welding current, given the laser pulse energy and droplet size.
The droplet deflections in Experiments 1419 were measured and are
shown in Fig. 12. As can be seen, the
droplet radial deflection was almost
negligible when the droplet was surrounded by the 120-A current arc.
This is explainable because the droplet
was actually surrounded and restrained by the arc-related forces,
mainly the electromagnetic force and
plasma dragging force. The electromagnetic force is proportional to the
square of the welding current. The
higher the current is, the more axially
restrained the droplet becomes; therefore, the smaller the deflection will be.
Gun Orientation. During GMAW,
the arc, reflected by the arc shape, affects the distribution of the arc forces.
In laser pulse-controlled GMAW,
droplet detachment and flying trajectory may be affected by changing the
arc deflection. In Experiments 20 and
21, the gun was tilted right and left,
respectively, for 15 deg. In particular,
the laser incident angle was changed
to 75 deg to avoid blocking of the laser
beam when tilting the gun. The results
of Experiment 5, where is zero and
the other parameters were the same,
are also referred for comparison. Figure 13 illustrates tilting of the gun and
Fig. 14 shows typical metal transfers

in Experiments 20 and 21. It can be

seen that droplet deflection was effectively reduced by intentionally tilting
the gun against the laser beam, because the arc forces in this case would
push the droplet against the laser impulse to a certain extent even though
the arc forces generated by an 80-A
welding current are relatively small.
Arc Length. In the experiments
presented previously, the arc length
was controlled to be stable at 6 mm.
Experiment 22 switched to a shorter
arc length, 4 mm, to examine the effect of the arc length on the resultant
metal transfer behavior. The welding
current was 80 A, the laser pulse was
1200 W 5 ms, and the pulse frequency was 25 Hz. The laser incident angle
was 60 deg. Figure 16 shows the typical metal transfer in Experiment 22.
No obvious droplet deflection was observed. The relatively low welding current used and slow travel speed resulted in relatively thick/high weld pool elevation behind the arc, which together
with the short arc length determined
that the arc tended to be forward deflected rather than wire-axial symmetrical, as shown in Fig. 17. The distribution of the arc plasma, as well as the
related arc forces, were consequently
changed. In this case, the arc forces
tended to push the droplet against the
laser impulse and thus contributed to
reducing the droplet deflection. On
the other hand, using short arcs could
also reduce the flying time of the

200-s WELDING JOURNAL / JUNE 2016, VOL. 95

Fig. 17 Illustration of arc deflection in Ex

periment 22.

droplet, resulting in a smaller radial

offset distance even if the droplet deflection angle was the same.

Conclusions
In the first part of this study, the ideal current-independent metal transfer
was successfully achieved by using a
high-power-density laser pulse to irradiate the droplets. The current paper further experimentally verified the effect
of key process parameters on the
droplet detachment behavior, especially
the droplet deflection after being detached. The major parameters include
the laser positioning parameters, laser
pulse waveform parameters, and arc parameters. Their effects on the resultant
metal transfer can be summarized as
follows:
1) The optimal laser incident position was determined to be the droplet

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neck position. If aimed at the main
body of the droplet, the laser pulse will
penetrate the liquid droplet to induce
a partial explosion. The optimal range
of the laser incident angle was determined to be 4560 deg in order to
minimize droplet deflection.
2) Experiments indicated that, as the
laser pulse power increased, the droplet
deflection decreased while the velocity
of the detached droplet increased. The
minimum laser peak duration for a robust ODPP transfer was determined.
The laser pulse frequency exactly
equaled the metal transfer frequency.
Given the welding current, the droplet
mass/droplet deflection decreased/increased, respectively, with the laser
pulse frequency.
3) A higher welding current produced a greater axial electromagnetic
force, restraining the droplet deflection. The droplet deflection also
could be effectively reduced by tilting
the welding gun or using a relatively
short arc.
Acknowledgments

This work is supported by the National Science Foundation under grant

CMMI-0825956, the Natural Science
Foundation of China under grant
51505009 and 51575133, and the
Postdoctoral Science Foundation of
China under grant 2015M570021.
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