Product Code: ICA10_1004

Remote Laser Welding of Zinc-Coated Sheet Metal Component in a Lap Configuration Utilizing Humping Effect
Authors:
Hongping Gu, Stonach Centre for Innovation, Magna International Inc; Aurora ON Canada
Boris Shulkin, Stonach Centre for Innovation, Magna International Inc; Aurora, Ontario Canada
Presented at ICALEO 2010

With the advancement of high power fiber delivery lasers, remote laser welding becomes a reality and more and more systems have been introduced into production lines. Remote laser welding takes the advantages of less mechanical movement and better accessibility of the beam to the workpiece, thus fast processing speed can be achieved. In most cases, remote laser welding involves lap welding. Laser beam lap welding of zinc coated steel components is not a straight process and it requires a special procedure to provide proper venting of the zinc vapour. Although there are many approaches to this issue, many of the approaches are either impractical or too costly to apply to remote laser beam welding. In this paper, a novel process is described to achieve remote laser beam lap welding with the generation of protuberances on the surface of one the components using the same laser. Depending on material thickness and coating type, the height of the protuberances can be varied by controlling the process parameters to achieve the optimal effect for the vapour venting. In this way, a controlled gap can be produced in the lap joining configuration. The whole process is very flexible and can be achieved at very high speed.