Flexishaper Increases High-Powered Laser Welding Speed
Laser welding is blooming in multiple industries, offering enhanced stand-off performance and better welding rates.
With the recent increase in the availability of high-powered NIR fiber lasers at affordable costs, power is practically no longer the limiting factor of laser welding process speed. Instead, other physical phenomena such as spattering, undercutting, humping, and weld porosity become dominant at high weld speed. These phenomena have been shown to be substantially reduced when using a special illumination profile consisting of a concentric ring and spot. However, the optimal power ratio between the spot and the ring differs for different welding process parameters and different system setups, and so an adjustable ring-to-spot ratio enables the system manufacturer to find the optimal work point for each process.
A shape useful in multiple welding applications, from stator motor pins through battery tabs to bipolar plates, is the laser ring with central spot. This shape provides a more stable melt pool as the spot is scanned, reducing cracking, porosity, and humping. To generate this with an adjustable spot-to-ring ratio, Holo/Or offers the Flexishaper, a set of two binary-phase elements that are robust and durable. Simply rotate them, one versus the other, to adjust the power ratio of ring to spot, turning any fiber laser into a better welding tool.
A blog post on the Holo/Or website is entitled, “Flexishaper – Ring-to-Spot Beam Shaping Optical Module.”
About Holo/Or
Holo/Or develops, designs and manufactures diffractive optical elements (DOEs) and micro-optical elements for any wavelength, from DUV to far IR, as well as software/automation solutions for the design. Holo/Or’s products include:
If you are interested in DOEs for your application, contact Holo/Or.