Laser welding

Laser welding is a special production technology that uses laser with high energy density as a welding heat source to achieve plate welding. Because of its advantages of high energy density, fast welding speed, environmental protection, and small plate deformation, it has been well applied in sheet metal manufacturing industry.

Comparison between laser welding and traditional arc welding

Introduction to arc welding

Traditional arc welding can be roughly divided into electrode arc welding, tungsten-argon arc welding, MIG arc welding, submerged arc welding. Arc welding is to induce an arc between the welding part and the welding rod, and the heat generated by the arc melts the contact part of the welding part and the welding rod to form a metal melt pool. With the direction of the welding rod, the new melt pool is constantly generated, and the old melt pool is constantly cooled and solidified, and finally the weld is formed. 

Schematic diagram of electrode arc welding

Argon tungsten arc welding uses tungsten electrode as the discharge electrode, but the electrode will not be consumed, using inert gas as the protective gas, relying on the heat generated by the arc to melt the base material and welding material, welding area is covered by the protective gas, basically will not splash.

Mig arc welding is to generate an arc between the welding wire and the base metal by energizing the wire, and melt the base metal and the wire.

Arc welding is still the main position in the welding field, but with the market for welding quality, efficiency requirements are getting higher and higher, the traditional arc welding in some high-end sheet metal manufacturing field encountered a bottleneck, the shortcomings of arc welding are becoming more and more obvious. The traditional arc welding requires the use of argon as a shielding gas, and the high purity argon cost is higher. Arc welding operation requires professionals with special operation certificates to carry out, and the entry threshold is high; Argon arc welding can produce high density current and high heat, which is not conducive to the welding of metal sheet with low melting point. The welding efficiency is low and the speed is slow. The welding surface is rough, if the surface topography requirements are high, it is necessary to increase the grinding process; Arc welding strength is limited.

Advantages of laser welding

The mainstream laser welding can be divided into self-fusion welding, swing welding, wire filling welding, galvanometer welding and a combination of multiple welding methods. Compared with traditional arc welding, the advantages of laser welding technology are shown in Table 1. For the high-end sheet metal manufacturing industry with high added value, good product consistency, small weld gap and the pursuit of efficiency, laser welding can be used as the first choice.