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WJ 2015 12 s367 PDF
WJ 2015 12 s367 PDF
WELDING RESEARCH
SUPPLEMENT TO THE WELDING JOURNAL, DECEMBER 2015
Sponsored by the American Welding Society and the Welding Research Council
Y. ALI, K. GUENTHER, and J. P. BERGMANN are with Department of Production Technology, Ilmenau Technical University, Germany. A. BURT
is with EWM AG, Mündersbach, Germany.
WELDING RESEARCH
Fig. 1 — Schematic drawing of the laserpreheated GMAW Fig. 2 — Installation of highspeed camera, GMAW gun, laser, and
process. GTAW torch.
(bypass current) without going both the arc length and droplet size in- laser preheated the welding wire and
through the base metal (main cur- creased (Ref. 12). The problem with helped reduce the arc energy necessary
rent). Thereby, the bypass current con- these methods is that up to a certain to melt the welding wire. The reduc-
trols the heat input into the base met- preheating current, the wire melts par- tion of the arc energy — and the asso-
al. A further development of the tially, bends, and is thus rather diffi- ciated heat input into the substrate —
process where replacing the noncon- cult to feed through the contact tip. positively affected the weld geometry,
sumable with a consumable electrode In this paper the authors propose especially the dilution, which is an im-
(thus, two GMA welding guns with an alternative way to reduce the heat portant factor for evaluating the wear
two power supplies) showed that the input by focusing a laser beam on the resistance of cladding.
deposition rate can be doubled (Refs. filler metal directly after leaving the The experimental system contains
7, 8). The increase in welding current contact tip. This preheating should re- a six-axis KUKA industrial robot,
compared to the process with a non- duce the welding current, which is nec- which provides an accurate and repro-
consumable electrode was approxi- essary to melt the filler metal, so that ducible movement of the welding gun
mately 50 A, and the current flowing the heat input and thus the dilution and laser optic. The welding power
through the base metal was 65% less will be reduced. Compared to GTAW supply was a CV (constant voltage)
than the main current. However, there preheating, as described above, the power supply EWM alpha Q 552 with
was no detailed information about the laser-assisted preheating does not dis- 4-roll drive system PHEONIX Drive 4.
change in the dilution rate. turb wire feeding. Additionally, the The laser source was a 1-kW diode
On the other hand, research laser-induced preheating of the con- laser LDM 1000 with a 300-μm fiber-
showed that by inserting an additional sumable electrode did not cause any optic cable. The laser beam was
resistive heating of the filler metal laser–arc interactions compared to hy- formed by a special focusing optic to
with a separate power supply, the ad- brid-laser GMAW (Ref. 13), in which the desired spot shape in order to
ditional preheating of the filler metal the laser is focused on the welding achieve the preheating effect on a 1.2-
led to a reduced welding current of up bead in order to reach a deep penetra- mm flux-cored filler metal. For this
to 25% and a reduced dilution from tion and high travel speed. The study study, an optic with a 600-μm focal
33% (conventional GMAW) to 4.5% is also different from laser-enhanced beam diameter and a focal length of
(Refs. 9, 10). Furthermore, the weld- GMAW (Refs. 14, 15), in which a low- 200 mm were used. Both welding pow-
ing speed could be increased from 1.14 power laser was directly focused on er supply and laser system were con-
m/min to 2.28 m/min. Other studies the molten wire tip. In this case, the nected to the robot control unit con-
showed that the resistive auxiliary pre- induction of an auxiliary force made it trolling all functions.
heating of the filler metal does not easier to detach the droplet without In order to evaluate the real process
only positively affect the dilution, but any significant change in welding cur- parameters, the real welding current
also the melt-off loss of the alloying el- rent and without preheating effect. and voltage were measured during the
ements compared to conventional process by a Mephisto Scope UM 202
GMAW (Ref. 5). Preheating the filler Experimental Procedures oscilloscope. The scanning rate was 2.5
metal with an additional GTAW torch kHz to obtain a detailed waveform for
instead of resistive heating was inves- Experimental Setup current and voltage. Additionally, a
tigated (Refs. 11, 12). Thereby, the high-speed camera Optronis Cam-
filler metal was preheated by a GTAW Figure 1 shows a schematic drawing Record CR3000x2 was used to record
arc before entering the contact tip. of the laser-preheated GMAW process. and characterize the metal transfer at
The results showed that by increasing A laser beam is focused on the welding 4000 frames per second. The camera,
the GTAW current (preheating tem- wire right below the gas nozzle. In ad- with appropriate filter, was placed per-
perature), the welding current could be dition to the resistance heating (joule pendicular to the plane formed by
reduced to approximately 35% while heating), the heat transfer from the laser beam and welding wire, as shown
WELDING RESEARCH
Fig. 3 — Influence of the laser power on the welding current and Fig. 4 — Effect of laser activation on the welding current and volt
voltage for continuous waveform. age for continuous waveform at 900W laser power.
Continuous 26 (V)
Waveform 5 0.3 90 deg 15 Ar + 30% 15
Pulsed 26 (V) 100 Hz (m/min) (m/min) (mm) He (L/min)
Waveform
WELDING RESEARCH
Fig. 7 — Influence of laser power on the heat input. Fig. 8 — Influence of laser power on arc length.
WELDING RESEARCH
WELDING RESEARCH
A B
Discussion
In order to understand the effect of
laser preheating on the GMAW
process, it should first be known that
the welding power source with con-
stant voltage characteristics used in
this study controls its voltage and am-
perage output. Figure 12 shows the be-
havior between the voltage and the
current for a constant voltage power
source. The welding current is deter-
mined by the wire feed rate, so that a
spontaneous change in feed speed will Fig. 12 — Constant voltage welding power supply characteristic.
change the arc length due to the re-
duced melting rate, which in turn
changes the welding current. ing current by a constant wire feed metal due to the laser-induced pre-
Back to the studied case, the laser rate should decrease the wire melting heating effect. Furthermore, high-
beam is focused onto the filler metal, rate so the arc length returns to its laser power melts the affected area of
which eases the melting of the wire normal position. Due to the laser pre- the wire. This rise in melting rate in-
and decreases the energy portion of heating of the GMAW filler metal, this creases the arc length and decreases
the arc, which is used to melt the filler controlling process is disrupted. the free end of the wire. As a result,
metal. The result was an increase in Regarding the laser-preheated wire the total heat input in the base metal
arc length and decrease in welding cur- for GMAW, the arc length cannot re- decreases (Fig. 8), which leads to a re-
rent. According to the controlling turn to its original position despite duction of the dilution compared to
process of the power source, an in- the reduction in welding current and conventional GMAW — Fig. 11A. This
crease of the arc length, for example the constant feeding of the welding reduction in dilution did not affect the
due to geometrical changes, should wire. The point is that focusing the weld width as expected, which might
lead to a decrease of the welding cur- laser beam onto the welding wire in- be explained by the increase of the arc
rent — Fig. 12. This reduction in weld- creases the melting rate of the filler length, widening the arc distribution,
WELDING RESEARCH
and consequently the weld bead. Conclusions and Borle, S. D., Gajapathi, S. S., Guest, S. D.,
As already shown, the reduction in Izadi, H., Gol, A. K., and Wood, G. 2014.
welding current for the pulsed wave- Future Work Welding processes for wear resistant over-
form is lower compared to the continu- lays. Journal of Manufacturing Processes
In this paper, the effects of laser pre- 16(1): 4–25.
ous waveform. The reason is that the ra-
heating of the welding wire in the 4. Cheng, J., Liang, X., Wang, Z., and
tio between the background current and Xu, B. 2013. Formation and mechanical
the peak current (amplitude) remains GMAW process, and its influences on
properties of CoNiCuFeCr high-entropy al-
almost constant because of the control- the weld characteristics, were investi- loys coatings prepared by plasma trans-
ling method of the power source. The gated. The results showed that the cor- ferred arc cladding process. Plasma Chem-
slight increase of the voltage in Figs. 3 relation between the wire feed rate and istry and Plasma Processing 33(5): 979–992.
and 5 is a normal result for the increase the welding current can be uncoupled 5. Shahi, A. S., and Pandey, S. 2008. Ef-
of the arc length — Fig. 11. using laser preheating, so that increas- fect of auxiliary preheating of the filler
The analysis of the process record- ing the laser power leads to a decrease wire on quality of gas metal arc stainless
ings shows laser preheating leads to of the welding current. This means that steel claddings. Journal of Materials Engi-
higher feeding rates can be used with neering and Performance 17(1): 30–36.
the formation of large droplets. The
lower heat input compared to the con- 6. Zhang, Y., Jiang, M., and Lu, W.
droplet detaching process is influ- 2004. Double electrodes improve GMAW
enced by the pinch effect, in which an ventional GMAW process. The decrease
heat input control. Welding Journal 83(11):
electromagnetic force is applied radial- in welding current goes along with an 39–41.
ly on the liquid end of the welding wire increase in welding voltage, which ap- 7. Li, K., and Zhang, Y. 2008. Consum-
and causes it to form the droplet. This peared as an increase in arc length. As a able double-electrode GMAW — Part 1: the
force is proportional to the square of result, the heat input in the substrate process. Welding Journal 87(1): 11.
the welding current, so that the de- decreased and led to a reduced dilution. 8. Li, K., and Zhang, Y. 2008. Consum-
creasing of the welding current by us- These effects were clearer for the con- able double-electrode GMAW — Part 2:
ing laser preheating weakens this force tinuous waveform compared to the the Monitoring, modeling, and control. Weld-
pulsed waveform. It was also noticed ing Journal 87(2): 44.
and thus the droplet detachment. In
that the decrease in welding current 9. Stol, I. 1987. Advanced Gas Metal Arc
the case of the pulsed waveform, large Welding Process (AGMAW). The Welding In-
droplets are sometimes formed, al- (electromagnetic force) for the continu-
stitute, pp. 493–511.
though the peak current and the re- ous waveform and the increase of 10. Stol, I. 1984. Method and Apparatus
sulting electromagnetic force, which molten volume per pulse in the pulsed for Arc Welding, Google Patents.
are responsible for detaching the waveform led to larger droplets, and 11. Ni, J., and Gao, H. M. 2013. Effect
droplet, are not significantly reduced the droplets were detached irregularly of the Wire Temperature on the Weld For-
(approximately 11 A at 900-W laser by gravitational forces. For further mation in GMAW. Advanced Materials Re-
power, Fig. 5). As already mentioned, work, the effect of the variation of search. 652: 2289–2292.
the laser preheating treatment in- pulse parameters, wire diameter, and 12. Ni, J., and Gao, H. M. 2013. Influ-
stickout on the laser-induced welding ence of preheated wire on GMAW process.
creases the wire melting rate, so that
process should be studied. Advanced Materials Research 668: 538–542.
the reduction in the free end of the 13. Bagger, C., and Olsen, F. O. 2005.
wire with constant wire feeding in- Review of laser hybrid welding. Journal of
creases the amount of molten metal Laser Applications 17(1): 2–14.
References
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