Laser technology has been developed progressively over the past 60 years. It’s widely used in the field of traditional processing, for example, marking, welding, cutting, etc., and in the area of aero- space where applying advanced materials is the strategical demands.
Laser welding is a welding technique used to join pieces of metal or thermoplastics through the use of laser. It offers high- density beam on the surface of the material.
The instant energy melts the material and the material crystallizes after cooling down, by which two materials are tightly joined.
Compared with the conventional welding processes, laser welding has many advantages.
First, the grains crystal grows unidirectional due to the laser beam irradiation, and shows a very fine dendrite structure, which results in excellent mechanical properties.
In addition, laser welding shows much lower thermal stress and thermal effect due to the small laser beam size. Thus, it is more feasible to join refractory materials and dissimilar metals.
Besides, less harmful substances are generated during the welding fume. Furthermore, the abilities of anti-porosity and anti-crack are much better.
In the market, there are various types of lasers corresponding to different applications. Even focusing on laser welding, there are plenty of kinds of lasers for different welding methods.
In the following content, we focus on discussing the welding performance by using the MOPA ns pulsed fiber laser, QCW fiber laser, and YAG laser. The detailed parameters of these three types of lasers are shown in Table 1.
The used ns pulse fiber laser for welding evaluation is based on the MOPA structure, assembled by JPT with eight adjustable pulse width. The welding evaluation results shown below are based on the three lasers. Please feel free to contact us if you need any further information.