Nozzles for laser welding machines. What types are there?
Summary
An important element of a laser welding machine is the laser gun. It must always be clean to guarantee a quality result. One of the main features of the laser welding gun is that it has interchangeable nozzles to work different types of welding, which are adaptable to each job. These are made of copper to give you high temperature resistance and excellent electrical conductivity. Due to the fact that there is not only one type of nozzle, we may have some doubts about which nozzel is more suitable the welding we have to do with the laser welding machine.
We can also say that most weldings depends on the power of the laser welding machine. The power of the machine will depend on what jobs we can perform more easily.
In this Blog we will focus on one of the main consumables of laser welders: the nozzles. How many we can find? What advantages they have?
Types of laser welding nozzles
When choosing which nozzle to work with during laser welding, we must first know if we are going to work with filling material or without . The nozzles are copper appliques that are used as tools and positioners for different types of welding. One of the main advantages of the nozzles apart from the quality of the product is the low prices, which makes them more accessible to the customer.
Nozzles for laser welding without filler:
- Short nozzle for flat angle.
- Long nozzle for outside corner welding.
- Spearhead for inside corner welding.
Nozzles for welding with filling material
The laser welding gun works with interchangeable nozzles. When welding with filling material there is only one type of nozzle. You can choose between 4 different models of the same type of nozzle, one for each filler wire diameter. These are grooved nozzles, and said channel is used to guide the thread towards the center of the laser beam. First of all, we must change the nozzle to a filler nozzle, choosing a size compatible with the welding wire to be used.
The focal length of these nozzles is at the top of the laser and gas outlet tube, going inward.
- Grooved nozzle for welding: There are 4 sizes for the 4 diameters of welding wire compatible with the LC-WELD Laser welding equipment: 0.8mm, 1mm, 1.2mm and 1.6mm.
Cutting nozzles
- There is one cutting nozzle if we want to cut thin materials using the power of the laser welding machine.
Different powers of Laser Welding Machines:
Laser welding equipment could be classified into different powers. We will not ask a 1500W machine for the same results as a 2000W machine. One advantage that laser welding machines have is that the penetration and depth of welding is much higher than that achieved by other conventional welding equipment.
We see that the depth of welding also varies, logically, depending on the material that we want to weld. It will be important to make our decision when choosing laser welding equipment , to know more or less in what field and materials we are going to work more often, however, as already mentioned, the versatility of these machines is very wide depending on the chosen power and with one equipment it is possible to weld many different materials of different thicknesses.
To give an example of the relationship between welding penetration in a material and the power of the machine, we have chosen stainless steel to observe the differences between a 1500W machine and a 2000W machine:
In this specific case we would see that the more power, the more thickness of welding and depth we can acquire and work. Thus, depending on the work to be done, we should choose a welding machine with one power or another. Depending on the work that the client must carry out and the type of material that must be worked, he will choose a machine with specific characteristics.
It is important to note that these devices are highly configurable. With this, we can adapt the parameters of each laser welding machine to operate in some jobs or others. This means that a 1500W machine would be configurable to work as a 1000W machine would, thus, the more power the laser welding machine has, the more configuration options I will acquire and the more versatile my machine will be.
Materials applied to Laser Welding:
As we have already told you before in previous blogs, laser welding machines allow you to work with different materials, such as: galvanized steel, stainless steel, aluminium, titanium, platinum, gold, certain plastics, among other materials. This is applicable to different industries. This versatility is very interesting, since with a laser welding equipment we can work on different surfaces and perform different types and techniques of welding. The laser beam is a very interesting tool for welding.
Next, we are going to see some examples of welds made with a laser welding machine:
