Enhanced process understanding for laser welding of copper and aluminum alloys with dynamic beam oscillation

The increasing electrification of automotive application require high quality and efficient joining processes for copper and aluminum alloys. Dynamic beam oscillation is suitable to cover the wide range of joining application for copper (thin to thick sheets) through the possibility of adapted energy distribution by one optical setup. However, amount of welding parameters increases strongly, which results in higher complexity of influencing factors.
Deeper process understanding and the identification of crucial process factors is necessary to overcome existing limitations in joint quality such as formation of blowouts, spatters and pores. Therefore, comprehensive insights in the welding process by X-ray imaging, high-speed video-recordings are combined with metallographic analysis. In this paper, the impact of the beam path speed on the process regime and the weld seam quality will be presented. Moreover, the transferability to applications and other difficult to weld materials like aluminum die-cast will be illustrated.