New application possibilities for fiber laser welding

Due to their unique design, fiber lasers offer new possibilities in the field of laser welding. Esp. their higher focusability is known to allow narrow and deep welds which help to increase weld performance and reduce heat input. But, as such beam sources are not yet common in industrial environments, their possibilities and main application fields are neither widely known nor fully assessed. Therefore their applications areas are presented. In addn., an outlook is given on very deep penetration welding with part thicknesses greater than 10 mm. It will be shown that plates with a thickness of 20 mm can be welded with just 4 kW of beam power while maintaining a narrow weld shape. This is possible by combining an optical setup with a low beam divergence and a multipass filler wire process on a special joint design. A high speed beam scanning system is used to improve the weld quality.