Advantage and Disadvantage of Laser Welding
Compared with other welding technologies, the main advantages of laser welding are as follows:
1. High speed, great depth, and minor deformation.
2. Welding can be conducted at room temperature or under special conditions, and the welding equipment is simple. For instance, when the laser passes through an electromagnetic field, the beam does not deviate; the laser can be applied for welding in a vacuum, air, or certain gas environments, and it can also be used for welding through glass or materials transparent to the beam.
3. It can weld refractory materials such as titanium and quartz, and it can also weld dissimilar materials with favorable effects.
4. After laser focusing, the power density is high. In the welding of high-power devices, the depth-to-width ratio can reach 5:1, and even up to 10:1.
5. Micro welding is feasible. The laser beam can be focused to obtain a very small spot and can be precisely positioned, which is applicable to the assembly welding of micro and small workpieces in large-scale automated production.
6. It can weld areas that are difficult to access, and perform non-contact long-distance welding, offering significant flexibility. Especially in recent years, the adoption of fiber optic transmission technology in YAG laser processing technology has enabled more widespread promotion and application of laser welding technology.
7. The laser beam is prone to temporal and spatial splitting, enabling simultaneous processing of multiple beams and multi-station processing, providing conditions for more precise welding.
However, laser welding also has certain limitations:
1. High accuracy is demanded for the assembly of the welded parts, and the position of the beam on the workpiece must not shift significantly. This is because the laser focus has a small spot size and a narrow weld seam, and additional filler metal is needed. If the accuracy of the workpiece assembly or the positioning accuracy of the beam fails to meet the requirements, it is prone to causing welding defects.
2. The cost of lasers and related systems is high, entailing a large one-time investment.
The above is a brief introduction to the advantages and disadvantages of laser welding. Laser welding is a high-intensity laser beam radiated to the metal surface, through the interaction between the laser and the metal, the metal is melted to form a welding. In the interaction between laser and metal, metal melting is only one of the physical phenomena.