Here come some deep insights on laser applications in E-Mobility production 😉
What does figure skating have to do with laser welding? After the E-Mobility Laser Congress in Garching, my mind is still buzzing from the high-class presentations. Chapeau to all the colleagues on their presentations! It's primarily about laser welding on battery cells, battery modules, motor components and electronic power modules. There are up to 10,000 welds in an electric car and each one must be perfect. Otherwise, in the simplest case, the car could stall, and in the worst case, the so-called thermal runaway happens, and the car potentially catches fire. The strategies for error-free, safe laser welding on difficult materials such as copper and aluminum range from pirouettes (wobbling and 8 shaped figures) to beam shaping (from spot in spot up to 4 spots adjacent to each other) to temporal power modulation and combinations of all of these. The beam paths shown in the presentations make you involuntarily think of the tracks of figure skaters, and the temporal modulation is the triple Rittberger that only the best athletes manage. Involuntarily, one also thinks of the operators of these systems, who have to correct highly complex strategies in the event of incoming part variations and clamping tolerances. Not to mention the unavoidable thermal lensing of high power IR single mode laser systems. Even AI systems reach their limits in these boundaries. Yet there is a solution to the underlying physical problem, at least for copper and its alloys: blue lasers. The high absorption coefficient of copper for blue light renders the blue laser a perfect fit for E-mobility welding applications. This increased absorption enables simplified welding strategies and robust results, even at lower power levels compared to IR lasers. The surface structure of copper does not influence the welding process; whether it has previously been finely brushed, oxidized, or etched, the favorable properties of the seam remain unchanged. 👉 Superior gap bridging 👉 Larger spot sizes leading to almost spatter free processes 👉 High-speed scanner welding without shielding gas For details check out our newest journal article "Joining Electrical Contacts in the Automotive Industry” and/or check out our latest LinkedIn post: https://lnkd.in/dj27778v Prof. Dr.-Ing. Zäh started the conference with the words: E-Mobility is the wholly grail for laser deployment in the production industry and that is very true. Blue lasers are playing a growing role in this process. Thanks a lot to the organizers TUM, Alena Gruendl, and partners AITeM, Univ Bologna/Milano, ApplicazioniLaser and PhotonicsViews. Disclaimer: Copper and dissimilar metal welding remains a challenging task even with blue diode lasers 😉. That’s why we have application experts who are eager to work with you. Challenge us here in a comment or at: https://lnkd.in/dSgsFBip