Laser welding is crucial for manufacturing e-mobility components, particularly copper and aluminum parts. However, their high reflectivity and thermal conductivity present challenges, leading to inadequate penetration and weaker welds. Beam shaping offers a promising solution by modifying the laser beam's intensity distribution. In this study, we demonstrate successful welding of aluminum battery cases, copper busbars, and hairpins using Multi-Plane Light Conversion for beam shaping. Results show improved weld quality, reduced defects, and enhanced mechanical properties. The technique provides a higher depth of field and an extra degree of freedom for optimizing weld quality, promising efficient and reliable manufacturing of e-mobility components.
The laser technology is key to the development of the e-mobility. We demonstrate how an optimal laser beam shaping enables high speed and high quality copper welding for the battery cells manufacturing.
The beam shaping parameters are explored and optimized and the optical performance is assessed. The process window is described for four sets of shape parameters as well as the comparison with an unshaped beam. The quality in each cases for different speed and average power is discussed. An optimal process at 6m/min and 8kW is obtained. At last, different welding configuration, such as transparent welding, are described.
Laser Beam Welding (LBW) of complex materials, such as ferritic and austenitic steel, is challenging. An appropriate beam shape improves the process by stabilizing the keyhole.
A methodology for tailoring the beam shape has been developed. The appropriate shape for LBW of 1mm thick steel is an inner intense spot and a background top-hat shape.
A dynamic beam shaper based on Multi-Plane Light Conversion has been developed: the ratio between the shapes and the back shape dimensions can be adjusted. The optical performance and the impact on the quality of the process with a 8kW 1.07µm laser are described.
Laser cutting process is a very broad application requesting a high beam quality. Optimizing the beam shape is a promising solution to the challenge of cutting thicker parts while maintaining a sufficient cutting speed.
We describe here a beam shaper compatible with industry standard equipment handling up to 16kW average power delivering an optimized non-symmetric shape. The different shapes are examined by means of online high-speed X-ray images, enabling to reconstruct the cutting front and to calculate the absorbed irradiance on the processed sample. This allows to compare the results with conventionally processed samples.
Incoherent beam combination consists of superposing several laser beams on a target. This technique is relatively simple to implement and uses "off-the-shelf" optical components, without active control of the phase or polarization of the input sources. With the Multi-plane Light Conversion (MPLC) technique, tailored and multi-reflective phase element, enabling to obtain an optimal beam quality in terms of divergence for a given number of input beams, we present non-coherent beam combiner of 4 Fibered high power input beams at 1µm with a total M² close to 2,5 and a combining efficiency around 92%.
The development of composite-based manufactured parts has been led, by the need of the aerospace industry to reduce the weight of aircrafts while maintaining a very good structural performance. The trend to use thermoplastic instead of thermoset resin enables even lighter parts, nevertheless it involves laser heating instead of IR lamp heating.
We describe the development of a laser beam-shaper based on Multi-Plane Line Conversion technology delivering a tailored top-hat beam profile on the composite fiber to optimize its consolidation and therefore final properties. We demonstrate the performance of the process and describe the optical performance of the beam shaper.
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