• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.23-31
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• 1991

Laser beam weldability of zircaloy-4was investigated using a pulsed Nd: YAG laser of 200W average power. Mechanical properties of laser and GTA bead-on-plate welded zircaloy-4 test specimens were compared. The influence of plasma generated during laser welding was analyzed and optimum laser welding parameters were investigated.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.71-77
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• 2007

Until now, many researches on laser-arc hybrid welding processes have been conducted mainly for high power CW laser and high direct current arc to weld the thick steel plates for shipbuilding. Recently, however the usage of thin steel plates, which tend to be deformed easily by thermal energy, is been increasing because of demand of light structure such as car body in the automobile industry. Accordingly, heat sources having relatively low heat input such as pulsed laser, dip-transfer DC GMA and pulsed GMA seem to be applied more increasingly and the study about those heat sources is needed more intensively. Any heat source mentioned above can not stand alone without weld defects at a relatively high welding speed for increasing the welding productivity. This is main reason to apply the hybrid welding process which uses pulsed laser and low-heat-input GMA heat sources simultaneously to weld the thin steel plate. In this study, parameters of pulsed laser and dip-transfer DC GMA welding are studied firstly through preliminary experiments, and then analyzed in the viewpoint of their physical phenomena. Before conducting the hybrid welding, a pulse control technique is developed based on the parallel port communication and Visual C++ 6.0. Owing to development of this technique, interactions of laser and arc pulses can be controlled consistently. Using the pulse control technique, the hybrid welding is conducted and then its interactive welding phenomenon is analyzed.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.32-39
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• 1991

A 200W pulsed Nd: YAG laser for fine welding was developed. The important laser parameters such as laser peak power, average power, pulse width, and pulse energy for welding were studied. In order to obtain the sufficient laser power density for welding, thermal lensing effects were analyzed and a laser resonator with laser beam divergence was designed. The power supply unit was designed to support up to 7kW input. The pulse control unit was developed using a GTO thyristor and could control over 100kW input power to obtain 3.5kW peak power laser. Also due to the GTO thyristor the pulse width could be varied continuously from 0.1 to 20 msec and maximum repetition rate was as high as 300pps.

• Laser Solutions
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.27-37
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• 2005

During laser spot welding of the braun tube electron gun, phenomena such as serious spattering and oxidative reaction, etc. were occurred. The spatter occurred from weld pool affects the braun tube, namely it blocks up a very small hole on the shadow mask and causes short circuit between two poles of the electron gun. We guessed that high power density and oxidative reaction are main sources of these problems. So, we studied to prevent and to reduce spatter occurring in spot welding of the braun tube electron gun using pulsed Nd:YAG laser. The characteristics of laser output power was estimated, and the loss of laser energy by optical parameter and spatter was measured by powermeter. The effects of welding parameters, laser defocused distance and incident angle, were investigated on the shape and penetration depth of the laser welded bead in flare and flange joints. From these results, the laser peak power was a major factor to control penetration depth and to occur spatter. It was found that the losses of laser energy by optic parameter and sticked spatter affect seriously laser weldability of thin sheets.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 1998.10a
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• pp.183-184
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• 1998

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.71-76
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• 1999

The real-time holographic interferometer with digital high-speed camera is applied to the experimental study of laser induced plasma/plume in pulsed Nd:YAG laser welding. A pulsed Nd:YAG laser with 1.2 kW average power is applied to generate laser induced plume. The recording speed of the high-speed camera is 3,000 f/s. The high speed photographs of weld plume without another visualization method, are compared with the visualization photographs with holographic interferometer. The radiation intensity from the laser induced plume is recorded by the high speed photographs, which fluctuated during laser radiation and disappeared after laser end. The density distribution of the plume is recorded by the holographic visualization method. The experimental results show the process of generation of the laser induced plasma/plume, and give the feasibility of quantitative measurement of laser induced plume in laser welding.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.57-62
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• 2013

Magnesium has good castability and limited workability, so its products have been manufactured by almost casting processes. In this study, a pulsed Nd:YAG laser was used to butt-weld the sand casting magnesium alloys. And the effect of welding conditions such as peak power, pulse width, welding speed was evaluated in detail. As a result of this study, large underfill and plenty of spatter taken place under the conditions with high peak power. Thus, it is recommended to use low peak power and long pulse width to obtain good welds with deep penetration. It is also confirmed that the welding speed and pps(pulse per second) are directly connected at weld defects such as underfill, porosity.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 2000.04a
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• pp.139-143
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• 2000

Laser beam weldability of Zircaloy-4 was investigated using a pulsed Nd:YAG laser of 550W average power. Mechanical properties and microstructure of laser butt welded Zircaloy-4 test specimens were examined. The influence of laser generated during laser welding was analyzed and optimum laser welding parameters were investigated.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.52-61
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• 1993

Laser welding of ASTM no. 1060 Al plate with a pulsed Nd: YAG laser of 200W average power was performed for end capping of KMRR nuclear fuel elements In this research, we performed basic welding experiments. Firstly, laser output parameters which affect laser welding parameters were studied by changing laser input parameters for effective welding of 1060 Al plates. We found that laser power density and pulse energy are important parameters for smooth bead shape. Secondly, welding parameters which affect weld width-to-depth ratio were studied by changing power density and pulse energy, shielding gas, and defocusing. We found that power density must be higher than 0.3 Mw/cm$^{2}$ pulse energy must be higer than 3 J. travel speed must not exceed 200mm/sec, laser focus must be existed beneath 2-3mm from plate surface and helium is proper shielding gas. Thirdly, we studied the weld defects of Al-1060 such as crack and porosity in lap-joint welding. We designed new welding geometry for crack free welding of Al-1060 plates, and obtained crack free weldment but with lack of fusion. However, with Ti, Zr grain refiner elements, we can weld Al plates without solidification hot crack. Finally, we studied the origin of porosity by changing shielding gas. And we found that porosity was resulted from entrapment of shielding gas by the collapsing keyhole.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 2002.10a
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• pp.595-599
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• 2002

Edge welding of thin sheets is very difficult because of the fit-up problem and small weld area In laser welding, joint fit-up and penetration are critical for sound weld quality, which can be monitored by appropriate methods. Among the various monitoring systems, visual monitoring method is attractive because various kinds of weld pool information can be extracted directly. In this study, a vision sensor was adopted for the weld pool monitoring in pulsed Nd:YAG laser edge welding to monitor whether the penetration is enough and the joint fit-up is within the requirement. Pulsed Nd:YAG laser provides a series of periodic laser pulses, while the shape and brightness of the weld pool change temporally even in one pulse duration. The shutter-triggered and non-interlaced CCD camera was used to acquire a temporally changed weld pool image at the moment representing the weld status well. The information for quality monitoring can be extracted from the monitored weld pool image by an image processing algorithm. Weld pool image contains not only the information about the joint fit-up, but the penetration. The information about the joint fit-up can be extracted from the weld pool shape, and that about a penetration from the brightness. Weld pool parameters that represent the characteristics of the weld pool were selected based on the geometrical appearance and brightness profile. In order to achieve accurate prediction of the weld penetration, which is nonlinear model, neural network with the selected weld pool parameters was applied.