Enhancing Process Efficiency due to high Focusing with high Brightness Lasers - Applicability and constraints

Efficiency in laser based manufacturing is often considered as the wall-plug-efficiency of the laser source itself. Nevertheless the overall efficiency during laser welding has to be reviewed as a sum of the laser source and the process design (i.e. material properties etc.) as well. The term of heat, which is dissipated in the base material due to heat conduction is often not contemplated, even if this term can reach very high values. The ration of heat dissipation in the base material to the total heat input reduces with increasing processing speed. In order to reach higher welding speeds, higher intensities are considered and investigated for laser welding. As a result, process efficiency can rise over 10% due to narrower spots and higher speeds. The applicability in terms of mechanical properties etc. is further discussed in the paper.