IPG's new swing welding head can track the weld to adjust the welding position

With the wider application of metal products, the demand for metal welding has increased substantially, and the traditional welding technology has become more and more difficult to meet the actual demand. In recent years, the rapid progress of laser technology has made the advantages of laser in industrial metal processing more and more prominent, and the technical application of combining the advantages of laser with metal welding has also been carrying out new challenges.

In response to the quality and surface problems of current laser welding, IPG introduced a Wobbler swing welding head. This welding head combines laser beam wobbling and seam tracking technology, which can adjust the lateral position of the welding head when the position of the welding seam changes, and can also provide superior welding quality on highly reflective materials. Standard welding heads are designed to focus the collimated laser beam to the desired spot size and keep the beam path static during beam delivery, presenting a static spot at the focal plane. This standard configuration results in each setting being limited to specific applications. In contrast, the swing welding head integrates scanning galvo technology within the standard welding head. By using an internal mirror to move the beam, the focal spot is no longer static and can be changed by changing the shape, amplitude and frequency of various patterns. to dynamically adjust the frequency setting that provides the best results based on spot size, swing diameter and linear welding speed. Furthermore, this welding technique is compatible with standard coaxial nozzles and assist gas devices, which suppress metal vapors during welding and help suppress plasma phenomena and control slag spatter.

The benefits of this wobble welding method are even more pronounced when a smaller laser spot is used. When using near-infrared (NIR) wavelengths, a small spot enables huge power densities, overcoming the high reflectivity of materials such as copper, aluminum, etc., resulting in a stable state with a wide processing window, and when using optimal swing When the parameters are adjusted, the generation of pores and cracks is avoided. This opens up new applications for infrared fiber lasers in electric vehicle and battery manufacturing.

In addition, different metal material manufacturers often need to weld a variety of different parts, which requires a certain flexibility of the welding equipment to meet the special requirements of each part. Changing the swing diameter can change the weld width and penetration without changing any optical configuration or spot size. For constant energy input, the weld shape changes from a traditional nail head shape to a rectangle as the swing amplitude increases. This weld cross-section, which allows for custom control, can be used in battery connector welding of high-power battery packs, resulting in a larger weld contact area, reducing electrical resistance in the weld joint, and providing good mechanical connection performance.

When welding dissimilar materials (such as copper and aluminum) in an overlapping manner, the dilution rate of the material can be controlled by controlling the penetration depth. By shallow melting of the underlying metal flakes, the amount of molten material can be minimized, and dilution can be controlled to reduce the generation of intermetallic compounds, without the need for filler materials.

Generally, traditional laser welding requires high-precision fixtures, but in many cases, the welded parts are not really clamped in the ideal position. The beam swing technology can greatly reduce the clamping requirements for these parts to be soldered, and the acceptable weld gap and offset of the swing welding are 2 to 3 times that of the general laser welding requirements.