Extending the process limits of laser polymer welding with high-brilliance beam sources (recent status and prospects of POLYBRIGHT)

Plastics play an important role in almost every facet of our lives and constitute a wide variety of products, from everyday products such as food and beverage packaging, over furniture and building materials to high tech products in the automotive, electronics, aerospace, white goods, medical and other sectors [1]. The objective of PolyBright, the European Research project on laser polymer welding, is to provide high speed and flexible laser manufacturing technology and expand the limits of current plastic part assembly. New laser polymer joining processes for optimized thermal management in combination with adapted wavelengths will provide higher quality, high processing speed up to 1 m/s and robust manufacturing processes at lower costs. Key innovations of the PolyBright project are fibre lasers with high powers up to 500 W, high speed scanning and flexible beam manipulation systems for simultaneous welding and high-resolution welding, such as dynamic masks and multi kHz scanning heads. With this initial step, PolyBright will break new paths in processing of advanced plastic products overcoming the quality and speed limitations of conventional plastic part assembly. Completely new concepts for high speed processing, flexibility and quality need to be established in combination with high brilliance lasers and related equipment. PolyBright will thus open new markets for laser systems with a short term potential of over several 100 laser installations per year and a future much larger market share in the still growing plastic market. PolyBright will hence establish a comprehensive and sustainable development activity on new high brilliance lasers that will strengthen the laser system industry

Laserdurchstrahlschweißen von Thermoplasten: Ein Verfahren erobert den Kunststoffmarkt

Dank seiner Vorteile hat sich das Laserschweißen von Kunststoffen zu einem etablierten Fügeverfahren entwickelt und es ersetzt mehr und mehr die bisher üblichen Fügeverfahren. Neue Entwicklungen beim Laserdurchstrahlschweißen ermöglichen nun das Überschreiten bisheriger Grenzen und eröffnen diesem Schweißverfahren weitere Anwendungsfelder

New laser sources expand field of application

The development of new laser sources have opened up new opportunities and challenges for laser welding. The applicability of these laser sources ranges from creating weld joints for the production of micro-scale components, to reproducible and reliable joining of large parts through welds that withstand high loads. Various processing strategies also allow maximum flexibility in terms of the most suitable type of radiation and short cycle times. These benefits of laser welding process of plastics is being increasing used for industrial applications. More automotive parts are being welded by this technique at automotive suppliers, electronics, and medical device industries. New approaches, such as Twist process have been developed, to overcome the challenges of high intensity and risk of material degradation associated with laser welding process