Development of CO Laser-Arc Hybrid Welding Process

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The principal obstacle to selection of a laser processing method in production is its relatively high equipment cost and the natural unwillingness of production supervision to try something new until it is thoroughly proven. The major objective of this work is focused on the combined features of gas tungsten arc and a low-power cold laser beam. In this work, the laser beam from a 7 watts carbon monoxide laser was combined with electrical discharges from a short-pulsed capacitive discharge GTA welding power supply. When the low power CO laser beam passes through a special composition shielding gas, the CO molecules in the gas absorbs the radiation, and ionizes through a process known as non-equilibrium, vibration-vibration pumping. The resulting laser-induced plasma(LIP) was positioned between various configurations of electrodes. The high-voltage impulse applied to the electrodes forced rapid electrical breakdown between the electrodes. Electrical discharges between tungsten electrodes and aluminum sheet specimens followed the ionized path provided by LIP. The result was well-focused melted spots.