As an emerging processing method, laser manufacturing technology has developed rapidly in the past ten years. It has gradually penetrated into the processing and manufacturing production lines of all walks of life, replacing traditional processes. Its high efficiency and relatively environmentally friendly advantages are favored by many users. The mainstream growth trend of the laser application market has evolved from the earliest low-power coding and marking, to medium and high-power cutting, and then to today's high-power and precision welding. By 2021, laser cutting is still the most important field, but in fact, in the past three years, the average growth rate of laser welding equipment has been higher than that of cutting equipment, becoming the next hot spot for laser applications, especially for automobiles, power batteries, and new energy. And other industries have driven the rapid increase of high-end laser welding equipment and general applications of handheld laser welding.
Laser welding has been developed for many years, but it has not been able to be applied on a large scale due to the small worktable, high requirements for fixture and automation design, and high equipment cost. Since the emergence of handheld laser welding more than 3 years ago, it has been welcomed by market users. The hand-held laser welding equipment has a simple structure and is mainly composed of lasers, chillers, hand-held welding heads, beam transmission and other components. Manual welding eliminates the need for workbenches, complex fixtures and operating system settings, and has considerable flexibility, making laser welding a It is as easy as ordinary argon arc welding and resistance welding, and it is very easy for general welders to switch to laser welding. At the same time, the equipment has become more flexible and mobile, which meets the requirements of many small processing plants.
Although hand-held laser welding has developed rapidly in China, it is not used much in developed countries in Europe and the United States. Probably this bare high-power laser hand-held welding operation does not meet the safety requirements of these countries. Compared with handheld laser welding equipment, ordinary argon arc welding equipment of several thousand yuan still has a cost advantage, and the market stock is very large. The purchase unit price of handheld laser welding machines has dropped significantly from the earliest 150,000 units to even 30,000 or 40,000 units today. The drop in the cost of use has inspired a large number of users to purchase, and it is expected to maintain an annual shipment of tens of thousands of units in the future, and replace traditional argon arc welding and resistance spot welding in many scenarios. Compared with the millions of argon arc welding, laser The alternative space for welding is huge.
Hand-held laser welding can be easily applied to steel sheets, stainless steel plates, metal pipes, etc. Currently, the commonly used power ranges from 500 watts to 2000 watts, which can easily weld metal materials with a thickness of less than 4 mm, and can cover many hardware products in life. For example, the most common are doors and windows, handrails and railings in the construction industry. Nowadays, people are more inclined to use stainless steel or even aluminum alloys. Using laser welding can improve efficiency, save solder electrodes, and the welding firmness is very high. With infrastructure construction and a large number of residential needs, the amount of doors, windows, handrails and railings is huge, and hand-held laser welding has great potential.
After welding, there is no need for a lot of grinding processes, saving A lot of manual work. It is understood that the bathroom industry has gradually realized the advantages of hand-held laser welding and has begun to use it widely. The other is the exhaust/ventilation duct, such as the catering industry, the factory ventilation and exhaust duct area is large, often made of galvanized iron or stainless steel, the resistance spot welding method used in the past is very inefficient, and the sealing is insufficient, resulting in odor leakage, The use of laser welding can completely sew the tube body with one seam to achieve a good welding effect.
Kitchen utensils use a lot of stainless steel materials, knives, shovels, kitchen utensils sorting racks, etc. are all welded, and laser welding can be fully applied. Many lampshades on lamps are made of metal materials. When cutting the material, laser cutting hollow patterns are used. After rolling, they are welded into lampshades. The applicability of hand-held welding is very wide and the development potential is huge.
