KEYWORDS: Blue lasers, Near infrared, Copper, Laser welding, Laser processing, Fiber lasers, High power lasers, Beam diameter, Light absorption, Thin film coatings
Copper is widely used in many industries due to high electrical conductivity and with the recent acceleration of EV shift, the needs for copper material processing are rapidly increasing. High power near-infrared (NIR) fiber lasers have been used in laser processing since high electric-optic conversion efficiency and excellent laser beam quality. However, copper welding with NIR fiber lasers is challenging. The absorption of copper is low in the NIR, and copper with high thermal conductivity diffuses the heat rapidly at welding spots. Previously we reported the hybrid laser system with 1- kW blue laser and 3-kW NIR fiber laser for copper welding. Blue laser with high absorption of copper generates stable molten pool at welding spots and assists NIR fiber laser processing for uniform welding and less spattering. In this paper, we present the improvements of blue laser. The first one is high power 2-kW with 300-μm core diameter and the second one is high brightness 1-kW with 200-μm. These are achieved by high power laser diode module, which has 500-W output power with 110-μm core diameter, and fiber-bundled beam combiner. Copper welding characteristics using this improved blue laser and NIR fiber laser would also be discussed.
Copper is widely used in many industries due to its high electrical conductivity, and copper welding is significant technology. High power near-infrared fiber lasers have been used in laser material processing in many fields since they provide high electric-optic conversion efficiency and excellent laser beam quality. However, copper welding with nearinfrared fiber lasers is challenging. Absorption of copper is low for near-infrared radiation, and copper diffuses heat rapidly at welding spots due to its high thermal conductivity. Previously we reported a hybrid laser system with a 150-W blue laser and a 1-kW near-infrared fiber laser for copper welding. Blue laser irradiation generates stable molten pool at welding spots due to high absorption of copper at the wavelength, and it assists near-infrared fiber laser to generate stable and spatter-less welding during the process. In this paper, we present a hybrid laser system with a 1-kW blue laser and a 3-kW near-infrared laser. The blue laser consists of blue laser diode modules with 250-W optical output power from optical fiber with 110-m core diameter. The laser diode modules contain blue laser diode chips in side lead packages, and the optical output power from the package is 13.2 W at 8.5-A rated current. We have also demonstrated laser processing to pure copper with the hybrid laser system. Uniform beads and approximately 2 mm penetration depth has been generated.
There has been a growing demand of laser welding for copper materials to manufacture industrial products with high electrical and thermal conductivities. The high thermal conductivity characteristic generates rapid thermal diffusion at a welding spot and hence reduces the power efficiency of laser welding. To overcome this issue, we propose to combine a blue laser beam performing a high absorptivity for copper materials, with a 1070-nm high power laser beam, launched from a single mode fiber laser. The blue laser beam can be focused at the welding spot with a sufficiently narrow beam waist, and the absorption of the blue light for copper materials is much higher than that of infrared light. Therefore, the focused blue laser beam causes rapid and highly efficient heat generation at the welding spot, and this localized heat is expected to improve the quality of laser welding. To generate the high-power blue laser beam efficiently, we fabricated a high power blue LD-integrated SLP which achieves an optical output power of 11.7 W at 10.5 A. We also fabricated a blue-DDL module using multiple SLPs and a stepped structure package adopted with a water-cooling system. The blue- DDL module can output a high fiber-coupled optical power exceeding 150 W. Next, we built a blue-NIR hybrid laser equipment which exhibits the excellent quality of laser welding by accurately controlled optical output power and beam spot diameters of both blue and NIR laser beams. In this paper, we describe the design and performance of blue LDintegrated SLP and blue-DDL module. We also report how the blue-NIR hybrid laser equipment contributes to improve the quality of the laser welding.
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