Lasers Meet the Challenge of Welding Aluminum
Aluminum has always been a challenge to weld, primarily because of its low melting point. But its weight advantage over materials such as steel has increasingly put the metal in the spotlight.Forty years ago, apprentice welders had to develop their own tricks and techniques to weld aluminum conventionally. These included identifying which shielding gas to use and determining how to reduce the size of the weld path. In those days, when the aluminum absorbed the plasma, the water vaporized. The...
Photonics Spectra, September 2002