Improvements of welding characteristics of aluminum alloys with YAG laser and TIG arc hybrid system

In high power YAG laser welding of steels, a rectangularly modulated beam with high peak power is usually used to get deep penetration. On the other hand, many spatters and solidification cracks are generated when some aluminum alloys are welded with a rectangularly modulated beam because of its high heat conductivity, high reflectivity, low surface tension, large contraction, wide solidification temperature range, etc. Therefore, a properly modulated beam or a continuous beam is usually used in aluminum alloy welding, although the penetration depth is shallow. In this research, sinusoidal wave or rectangularly modulated wave of YAG laser combined with TIG arc was tried to improve the weldability of A6061 aluminum alloy. As a result, when TIG arc was superimposed behind the YAG laser beam, deeply penetrated weld beads with good surface appearances were produced without spatter losses and cracks.