hey there friends what is up i'm chris ewing here in marlborough massachusetts
at the ipg photonics applications lab where we're going to check out the newest model
in the lineup of the light weld handheld laser welding and cleaning systems the xr
extended range while i've been welding for a really long time i don't have any hands-on laser
welding experience very limited robotic welding experience so let's go check out what they got
all right so here we are inside the ipg shop i got dan the man the light weld engineer extraordinaire
is going to tell me all about this new light weld xr handheld laser welding and cleaning machine
now i know you saw the last video where my buddy paulie over at well.com got to play with the xc i
didn't get to do that so check out the xr what can you tell me about it with the xr what we've done
is we've added an extended range of capabilities before with the xc you still have the cleaning
function you can weld the stainless steel miles still 3000 and 5000 series aluminum on the xr what
we've done is we've extended that range now we can weld same thing we can weld stainless mild steel
35000 series aluminum but we've added titanium nickel alloys copper galvanized steel
it really widens the range of all the different materials that you can weld
right so how about we stop talking about it and start welding with it all right let's do it
so we're going to be welding some copper dissimilar thicknesses so we got a piece
of three millimeter thick copper and then a piece of one millimeter thick copper
do three tacks two on the outside one in the middle okay because you're going to start
here and travel back if you look at this guide plate that we have here you want to put the edge
of your nozzle with that guide plate that's going to allow you to have a straighter weld
without having to worry too much about coming off of it or stressing yourself out that you're
going to run off the weld so that's one beauty about this process that you can't do with a lot
of other processes is you can actually have guide plates because you know we have this
guy beam laser that's on there if you can see it here on the camera when you're setting up that guy
plate what you want to do is do a test run first where you're running it through the material right
at your joint so you're going to go all the way down your joint make sure that your guide plate
is straight and and this guy beam is going all the way down your joint that way you know that you're
going to follow that joint and stay straight and not deviate towards one part or the other cool
yep
all right now you can do your test uh test run to make sure that you're guy beam it's where you need
it to be so you're just checking that that guy laser follows right at the joint of the two parts
all right looks pretty good yep i would say that looks pretty good
all right now if you want to start from that tack well there and go forward yep
all right now you can go all the way straight back
a little bit faster there you go that's a good speed there
very nice
nice even heat stain yep
all right so it looks like you got something a little more exciting now yes
what you got so just to continue demonstrating the extended range
of the xr model we have some titanium so this is one millimeter titanium tubing
we have a straight piece here and we're going to weld it onto this 90 degree elbow
this application you would see a lot on exotic car exhaust race for exhaust that sort of thing the
benefits of laser welding compared to tip welding is you're going to be able to do it a lot faster
which equates to not having as much heat input in the park titanium is a very picky material
to work with because if you weld it too slow and you have too much heat input into the part
you're actually having a really hard rock weld on the welded surface which can lead to cracks
and those cracks you know it might not happen right away it might happen six months down the
line and when you're spending that much money on the titanium exhaust you really don't want it to
crack six months down the road so what we're able to do with the xr model not having so much heat
input the weld it becomes a much more structural weld that can be subjected to high pressures
and a lot of heat cycles that you would see on an exhaust and then it's just faster for you to do
too exactly so you're going to be more efficient you're going to be faster when you're welding and
really when it comes down to it you have an end result that's better for everyone
so chris we got this copper c channel here it's a one millimeter thick and um we're gonna go
ahead and weld up one of those i'm gonna do two corners i'll let you do the other two corners
i'm gonna take this one home for the wife all right
you can you can keep the one we make here if i mess it up all right it won't stay let's do it
hmm
well i mean that thin stuff would have been a real pain with tig welding so yep it's cool to see you
know that complete penetration on the the welds yours look a little prettier than mine if you're
to tig weld this you'd be struggling to make sure that you're not touching the material with your
tungsten so that's something that i find difficult switching over this is that you have to maintain
contact with the part in order for that electrical connection as that safety feature if you come
off the particle cuts the laser so that you're not laser blasting everyone around you exactly
all right chris so next up is going to be a quarter inch stainless we're going to
do a full penetration pass on this to show the extent the range of capabilities on the xr
so we're going to do a corner weld then go all the way through it
cool now this being quarter inch that's like at the top edge of what this machine is rated
for correct exactly so our travel speed is not going to be as fast as some of the thinner stuff
right obviously that's just how the material is going to burn it's going to take a little bit
longer to burn all the way through but it's all you put some hash marks on on the part
exactly so that's just a little trick to help me uh identify inch per inch so that i know that i'm
traveling at the correct speed that i need to get that full penetration yep cool ready to go
we're going to go ahead and switch the xr unit over from a weld process
to a cleaning process i got three different options for steel titanium and nickel alloys
they give you all kinds of options there let's try cleaning some stuff
cleaning was quick we didn't have to bust out any chemicals ppe and the stuff you got
to get out for all of that swapped out the tip took maybe a minute to do the actual cleaning
all right chris so we just finished welding these up you did one i did one we got full penetration
on this fusion welded it so we went ahead and left 130 and then cleaned one up just so that
the viewers can see the difference between obviously you have all the heat input into
the part and then we clean this one up using the cleaning function on the xr so i mean biggest
difference between this and the other samples that we were doing is being you know quartz you can see
the heat stain into this one whereas the other stuff you know maybe on camera it doesn't look
like it's fused very well because you don't see any of the heat input this one clearly shows that
yeah and then the benefit over tig welding is we didn't prep any of this this is a closed corner
where there's percent penetration on the inside of that and
there was no prep where i didn't have to bevel anything um i didn't have to set a gap
and try and fill in that gap you know with the tig welder and some wire
while it was slower than doing the thin stuff it's still faster than having a tig weld then
so on this uh quarter inch stainless here we do have a little bit of a heat affected zone
but if you were to attempt to do this with a tig welder fusing it to try to get 100 penetration
this whole part would be a heat affected zone not just this small piece here absolutely
got a lot of welding done today then we yeah some stainless aluminum copper titanium quite a day
what are your thoughts i've never hand held laser weld anything so to be able to go from
having never done it to literally producing 100 penetration welds on quarter inch stainless steel
that's crazy to me everyone seems to have the same learning curve they can pick it up really
fast because it's taken a lot of the human error out of it machines all set up ready to go all of
your presets are already done to make sure that the customers have all the information they need
to get a specific well done for certain industries for the industries that would benefit from this
this is a game changer like if you're doing tig welding right now you seriously need to look at
this handheld laser welding as a possibility this is not some hundred thousand dollar two hundred
thousand dollar machine this is affordable for a small business this is affordable for
a hobbyist that wants to produce some art there's a ton of areas that i could see this
really benefiting individuals and companies for more information on the lightweld xr
visit ipg photonics.com and of course if you got questions comments concerns
belligerent observations drop those in the comments until next time hope this helps