Laser Welding, or often known as Laser Beam Welding (LBW), is a High Quality Welding Process

Laser welding, often called Laser Beam Welding (LBW), is a relatively recent welding operation that's only been around for a few decades, and only recently has it began to reach a more widespread usage. At the start it was used with exotic metals that were hard to weld by using established welding procedures. But as time and technology progressed, laser welding has gone into a more important position amongst the individual types of welding operations.

What is laser welding? It's a kind of welding process that employs the use of a highly focused laser beam to project a high-powered beam of light onto a piece or pieces of metal in order to cause the metals become liquid and meld together as they cool.

The beam of light that's produced by the laser can either be a visible beam or an infrared beam. As the beam of light leaves the laser is guided by optics that are capable of positioning the beam wherever it's needed. Through the use of these specialized optics it's also possible to focus the beam on a very small and narrow spot.

One of the primary benefits of laser welding is due to this ability to focus on such a fine region. By focusing on such a tiny area, the energy density gets bigger as the focal point gets smaller. This carries the advantage of minimizing the heat affected zone (HAZ), while increasing heating and cooling rates. The average size of the spot produced by the laser deviates from a few tenths of a mm up to two centimeters.

Usually laser welding is a wholly automatic operation. Computers are utilized to control all facets of the weld including weld size, input power, control of the weld beam, and so forth. Because of this computer control, the accuracy, repeatability, and overall quality will be extremely high. Not just for an individual weld, but for every weld.

There are basically two types of laser beam welding that are used. The laser beam is usually either a continuous beam or an intermittent beam commonly known as a pulsed beam. Which process is used depends primarily on the thickness of the material that is to be fused. Thin metals are more apt to employ the pulsed beam procedure, whereas thick metals that need very much more heat usually employ the continuous beam operation.

Laser beam welding is an extremely useful operation in that it can be used to attain extremely high quality welds in nearly any type of metal that's weldable; including stainless steels and carbon steels, aluminum, and titanium. If you'd like to know more check out this laser welding machine .