Advantages of laser welding
Compared with other welding technologies, laser welding has several advantages:
- It offers fast welding speed, large welding depth, and minimal deformation.
- It can be used to weld at room temperature or under special conditions, and the welding equipment is simple. For instance, when a laser beam passes through an electromagnetic field, it does not shift. Also, laser welding can be performed in a vacuum, air, and some gas environments. It can even weld through materials that are transparent to the beam, such as glass.
- It can weld refractory materials such as titanium and quartz, and can join dissimilar materials with good results.
- The high power density achieved by focusing the laser beam enables a depth-to-width ratio of up to 5:1, and even up to 10:1 in high-power devices.
- Laser welding can achieve micro-welding by obtaining a very small spot, which can be accurately positioned. It is suitable for assembling and welding micro and small workpieces produced in large quantities. (the minimum spot can be up to 0.1mm)
- Laser welding can reach inaccessible parts and implement non-contact long-distance welding, offering great flexibility. In recent years, the adoption of optical fiber transmission technology in YAG laser processing has made laser welding more widely used and more convenient for automatic integration.
- The laser beam can easily realize beam splitting according to time and space, enabling multi-beam simultaneous processing and multi-station processing, providing conditions for more precise welding.
Disadvantages of laser welding
However, laser welding also has some limitations:
- It requires high assembly accuracy for the weldment, and the beam position on the workpiece should not deviate significantly. This is because the spot size after laser focusing is small and the weld is narrow, making it susceptible to welding defects when the workpiece assembly or beam positioning is inaccurate.
- The cost of the laser and its related systems is high, requiring significant one-time investment.
