Developers and users of industrial remote laser beam welding applications are often faced with different challenges under the conditions of series production. First, those applications are preferably conducted without any localized gas shielding, and therefore, specific interactions between the laser radiation and the welding fumes are very likely to occur, causing an impairment of the process stability, the reliability and the weld seam quality. Second, welding fume residuals are capable of contaminating workpieces, optical components and other parts of the processing chamber, and they are also able to cause a serious pollution of the cabin atmosphere, because a significant part of the welding fume species is harmful or even toxic and carcinogenic. Each of these points gives a good reason to develop appropriate cabin air flow concepts, but in practice, it is still a challenge to design and optimize the air or gas flow because (i) the conditions of an ideal gas flow regime are uncertain, (ii) different gas flows are able to interact in complex manners, and (iii) it is costly to describe and monitor the gas flow characteristics inside the processing chamber experimentally.
ICALEO News
Combination of Short and Ultrashort Pulse Laser Processing for Productive Large Scale Structuring of 3D Plastic Mould Steel
By: Andreas Brenner, Fraunhofer-Institute for Laser Technology and Fabian Kurzidim, Volkswagen AG Increasing demand for surface functionality Surface functionality is an increasing and crucial factor for the success and acceptance of a product. Through structured surfaces products can gain additional functions. In the automotive industry for example microstructures enable friction reduction in combustion engines or optimize […]
ICALEO 2017: Accepting the Challenge
By: Jim Naugle Held in the Sheraton® Atlanta Hotel, the 36th International Congress on Applications of Lasers and Electro-Optics (ICALEO®) once again brought together many of the best and brightest of laser and optics professionals to network. Scientists and scholars reviewed the state-of-the-art in laser materials processing and predicted where the future will lead. With […]
3D Printing of Conductive CNT-polymer Composite
By: Ying Liu, Wei Xiong, Lijia Jiang, Yunshen Zhou, Yongfeng Lu Advanced three-dimensional (3D) micro/nanofabrication of functional devices represents a key research topic in modern nanoscience and technology and is critically important to numerous scientific and industrial applications. Among various existing 3D micro/nanofabrication methods, two-photon polymerization (TPP) based on laser direct writing is regarded as […]
High Speed Creation of Antireflective Nano Periodic Surfaces via Picosecond Laser Surface Treatment
By: Yung Shin With the growing need for renewable energy sources, there is an increasing demand for cheap and high-efficiency solar cells. Although high-efficiency silicon solar cells with overall efficiencies higher than 25% [1] have been fabricated in laboratories, the high cost involved in manufacturing these high-efficiency devices makes their commercial use not yet practical. […]