Laser Welding and Cleaning

We are the only shop in Calgary that has an IPG Photonics LightWeld 1500XR. Laser welding and cleaning is exactly how it looks on the social media videos, it is however much more impressive in person. This machine can pretty much weld any material without requiring a bevel, it penetrates much deeper and leaves a perfect weld. It will penetrate up to 0.25" in steel and 0.1875" in aluminum. The most impressive attribute is that the heat affected zone is extremely small, you can literally touch the weld afterwards. 

I have welded my fair share of aluminum pieces, the two most common methods are TIG or MIG. Both of these processes require the edges to be bevelled down to the root and the material to be pre-heated. You end up with a lot of warping and a large, blobby looking weld. Aluminums tensile strength is severely affected by heat, through welding it looses most strength and becomes very prone to cracking. The laser welder requires no pre-heat and no bevelling. It will penetrate deep while leaving a flat seam, producing a strong weld.

Since the heat input is so concentrated almost anything can be welded with almost no distortion. The main purpose I use it for is welding stainless sheet together, as before it would buckle with TIG welding. The laser cleaning function will also remove all of the discolouration oxides from welding.

Wire EDM (Electrical Discharge Machining) is a process that uses a fine brass wire submerged in water to cut through a conductive material using electricity. The water acts as a dielectric to control the spark gap between the wire and the piece being cut, typically around 0.0015". The water also clears away cut debris and keeps the whole process under a very accurate temperature controlled environment. All of this allows the machine to cut down to tolerances of 0.0002" and finishes to 0.4Ra.

Check out more details on the tab, top right.

The machine I have is a Charmilles Robofil 2030SI.

It will cut up to 5.5 inches (139.7mm) thick

A movement of 12 x 8 inches (305 x 203mm)

Able to cut tapers up to  30 degrees

Maximum Workpiece  39 x 19.5 inches (1000 x 500mm)

It will cut anything conductive.

Steel, Stainless, Nitronic, Inconel, Graphite, Carbide, Copper, Aluminum, Polycrystalline Diamond (PCD), Cubic Boron Nitride (CBN) and Magnets.

I have a CNC machine which does not have a tool changer, it has to be changed by hand. So this machine I keep for simple jobs like drilling, basic milling and tapping. The video to the right is an example of a 3/4" thread in cast iron. 

I can make custom jigs to quickly and cheaply get your part made.

A customer wanted some steel pieces 2 inch square and 0.625" thick drilled and tapped in the middle. There are varying degrees to how well these parts need to be made, which is not always expressed by the customer. The ideal way is to drill and chamfer one side, then flip it over, chamfer and then tap. Doing it this way eradicates burs on the thread that might protrude. Doing it in one step and then countersinking the back may deform the threads slightly so the bolt does not pass through easily. If the quantity justifies it there are tools that will chamfer the bottom from the top of the parts, so drill, chamfer top, chamfer bottom and tap. This is the perfect method but requires extra tooling.

The fast method would be to drill each hole on this machine first, then tap each hole afterwards. With no chamfers it removes a step making the part cheaper, but at the expense that the thread will have a protruding burr on the top and bottom.

For reference the first method would be around 20 parts per hour, or $6 each. The second method could be done at 120 parts per hour, or $1 each. Some customers choose this method and grind the burrs off themselves, and sometimes the burrs don't even matter. The second method I can still chamfer the edges but quality and accuracy are affected with every time the part is unclamped since the raw material is not always uniform or perfectly cut.

This is where I very first started in my CNC machining career, machining plastics to make custom seals. I eventually learnt sealing design and even designed a whole bunch of tooling to make parts more accurately and faster. With the aid of the wire EDM I am able to make custom carbide inserts.

The problem in Canada is that there are very few suppliers of engineering grade plastics and almost none that stock everything. It makes it almost impossible to be competitive  when it's cheaper to buy abroad and pay the extreme postage costs, this is something I eventually would like to change.

Click on the tab at the top right for more information, Extra.