• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.17-22
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• 2013

The excellent beam quality of high power fiber lasers are commonly used for remote welding applications in body job applications. The Welding speed and productivity is unmatched with any other welding technology including resistance spot welding or traditional laser welding. High tooling cost for clamping and bulky safety enclosures are obstacles which are limiting the use. With the newly developed Laser stitch welding gun we have an integrated clamping in the process tool and the laser welding is shielded in a way that no external enclosure is needed. Operation of this laser welding gun is comparable with resistance spot welding but 2-times faster. Laser stitch welding is faster than spot welding and slower than remote welding. It is a laser welding tool with all the laser benefits like welding of short flanges, weld ability of Ultra High Strength steel, 3 layers welding and Aluminium welding. Together with low energy consumption and minimum operation cost of IPG fiber laser it is a new and sharp tool for economic car body assembly.

• Laser Solutions
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.21-28
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• 2008

Remote Laser welding technology for manufacturing automotive body is studied. Laser welding and industrial robot systems are used for the robot based laser welding system. The laser system is used 1.6kW Fiber laser(YLR-1600) of IPG. The robot system is used HX130-02 of Hyundai Heavy Industry(payload : 130kg). The robot based laser welding system is equipped with laser scanner system for remote laser welding. The welding joints of steel plate and steel plate coated with zinc are butt and lapped joints. The quality test of the laser welding are through the observation the shape of bead on plate and cross-section of welding part. During past three years the laser system, 4kW Nd:YAG laser (HL4006D) of Trumpf was used and the robot system, IRB6400R of ABB (payload:120kg) was used. The new laser source, robot and laser scanner system are used to increase the processing speed and to improve the process efficiency. This paper introduces the robot based remote laser welding system to resolve the limited welding speed and accuracy of the conventional laser welding system.

• Laser Solutions
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.14-20
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• 2010

Robot path generation and laser welding technology for manufacturing automotive body are studied. Laser welding and industrial robot systems are used with the robot based laser welding system. The laser system used in this study is 1.6kW Fiber laser, while the robot system is 6 axes Industrial robot (payload: 130kg). The robot based laser welding system is equipped with laser scanner system for remote laser welding. The laser source, robot and laser scanner system are used to increase the processing speed and to improve the process efficiency. The welding joints of steel plate are butt and lapped joints. The quality test of the laser welding are through the observation the shape of bead on plate and cross-section of welding part. The 3 dimensional laser welding for non-linear pipe welding line is performed. This paper introduces the robot based laser welding system to resolve the limited welding speed and accuracy of the conventional spot welding system.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.24-30
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• 2012

Laser welding by fiber laser accompanied by a lot of spatter and humping bead. This is because the deep and narrow keyhole usually form due to high beam quality. So the weld bead is formed defects, because the plasma jet with a high vapor pressure make the molten pool on keyhole wall scattered. For such a reason, unstable behavior of keyhole is difficult to monitor laser welding by using the laser induced plasma. Mostly, fiber laser welding of thick plates most be influenced by this effect. Therefore, fiber laser welding has been difficult to apply the sole. Thus, laser welding monitoring based on plasma measurements have much difficulty in measurements and analysis of signal. In this study, influence of the plasma emission signal according to welding speed and laser power in fiber laser welding analysed by using RMS and FFT analysis. We can verify that RMS value of the plasma emission signal changes with welding parameters in fiber laser welding, and aspect ratio greater than 1, the peak of FFT frequency had been moved in accordance with welding parameter.

• Journal of Power System Engineering
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.58-63
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• 2010

A laser beam welding and an electric arc welding were combined, and the positive points of each welding method are drawn such as high speed, low thermal load, deep penetration, and high productivity. The fiber laser-MIG conjugated welding. namely the hybrid welding has been studied mainly for the automation industry of a pipeline welding. In this study, the MIG welding was combined with a fiber laser welding to make up the hybrid welding. The weld shapes, microstructures and mechanical properties for weld zones after the hybrid welding or only fiber laser welding were investigated on the 700 MPa grade Ultra Fine Grained(UFG) high strength steel. The amount of acicular ferrite in weld metals and HAZ(heat affected zone) was observed larger after hybrid welding compared with after only laser welding. The Vickers hardness of the top area of the fusion zone after fiber laser welding was higher compared with after hybrid welding.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 2009.11a
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• pp.29-29
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• 2009

On this research, laser welding technology for manufacturing automobile body is studied. Laser welding technology is one of the important technologies used in the manufacturing of lighter, safer automotive bodies at a high level of productivity; the leading automotive manufacturers have replaced spot welding with laser welding in the process of car body assembly. Korean auto manufacturers are developing and applying the laser welding technology using a high output power Nd:YAG laser and a 6-axes industrial robot. On the other hand, the robot-based remote laser welding system was equipped with a long focal laser scanner system in robotic end effect. Laser system, robot system, and scanner system are used for realizing the high speed laser welding system. The remote laser welding system and industrial robotic system are used to consist of robot-based remote laser welding system. The robot-based remote laser welding system is flexible and able to improve laser welding speed compared with traditional welding as spot welding and laser welding. The robot-based remote laser systems used in this study were Trumpf's 4kW Nd:YAG laser (HL4006D) and IPG's 1.6kW Fiber laser (YLR-1600), while the robot systems were of ABB's IRB6400R (payload:120kg) and Hyundai Heavy Industry's HX130-02 (payload:130kg). In addition, a study of quality evaluation and monitoring technology for the remote laser welding was conducted. The welding joints of steel plate and steel plate coated with zinc were butt and lapped joints. The quality testing of the laser welding was conducted by observing the shape of the beads on the plate and the cross-section of the welded parts, analyzing the results of mechanical tension test, and monitoring the plasma intensity and temperature by using UV and IR detectors. Over the past years, Trumf's 4kW Nd:YAG laser and ABB's IRB6400R robot system was used. Nowadays, the new laser source, robot and laser scanner system are used to increase the processing speed and to improve the efficiency of processes. This paper proposes the robot-based remote laser welding system as a means of resolving the limited welding speed and accuracy of conventional laser welding systems.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.67-73
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• 2006

Laser welding is suitable for welding to the aluminum alloy sheet. In order to apply the aluminum laser welding to production line, parameters should be optimized. In this study, the optimal welding condition was searched through the genetic algorithm in laser welding of AA5182 sheet with AA5356 filler wire. Second-order polynomial regression model to estimate the tensile strength model was developed using the laser power, welding speed and wire feed rate. Fitness function for showing the performance index was defined using the tensile strength, wire feed rate and welding speed which represent the weldability, product cost and productivity, respectively. The genetic algorithm searched the optimal welding condition that the wire feed rate was 2.7 m/min, the laser power was 4 kW and the welding speed was 7.95 m/min. At this welding condition, fitness function value was 137.1 and the estimated tensile strength was 282.2 $N/mm^2$.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.1299-1306
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• 2007

The combination of laser beam and electric arc sharing common weld pool has widely been investigated since the late seventies, but it is beginning of the industrial uses. Recently, laser-GMA hybrid welding process showed possibility to overcome the tight gap tolerance with improved productivity. The laser-arc hybrid welding process is inherently complex because it has three kinds of process parameters: arc welding, laser welding and hybrid welding parameters. In this study, the optimum range of the process parameters were determined by high speed image analysis which could unveil the welding phenomena in laser-arc hybrid welding. The laser-arc hybrid welding was applied for position welding from the flat position to the overhead position and the welding characteristics were investigated.

• Laser Solutions
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.27-30
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• 2005

Nowadays, most automotives companies are making use of laser welding in car body assembly shop. But even though laser welding is better than resistance spot welding in many points, its application has been limited to special technology for manufacturing. The paper introduces in the field of remote welding system (RWS) to improve the process efficiency of laser welding. Positioning time of RWS between welding stitches is dramatically reduced to zero. It is a kind of solutions to generalize laser welding in mass production. This RWS consists of fiber laser, industrial robot and 3-axis scanner.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.30-35
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• 2004

Laser welding is obviously an attractive method to join small, thin parts such as small stainless steel tubes, but it is very sensitive to the joint clearance and tolerance, and this makes laser welding difficult to obtain consistent welding qualities over time. Recently, Plasma Augmented Laser Welding(PALW) is being developed to solve these problems. In this study, plasma arc welding(PAW) was introduced to join conventional V-grooved butt joint of thin stainless steel strips using single laser heat source in manufacturing small stainless steel tubes. The effect of the welding speed enhancement is investigated by the experiments. Effects of welding directions, distance between the heat sources and intensity of arc heat source on the optimal welding speed was investigated. Through this research, it was confirmed that PALW process has higher welding speed and robustness than laser welding process.