Synrad's CO2 laser welds acrylic in 3 seconds
A
Laser Lines (Industrial and Medical) product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team
Dec 16, 2008
Synrad has proved the effectiveness of its CO2 lasers at welding acrylic.
Synrad's sealed CO2 lasers are used for cutting, welding, drilling and marking.
Polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), commonly called acrylic, is a transparent thermoplastic sold under trademarks including Plexiglas and Lucite.
Bonding or welding PMMA can be accomplished with chemicals (liquids such as methylene chloride or cyanoacrylate), ultrasonic welders or CO2 lasers.
Of the three, lasers provide the greatest flexibility for controlling weld width, weld depth and weld path.
Synrad set up a rotating fixture that clamped two 1.14mm thick PMMA discs in position underneath a beam path.
Because traditional laser welding does not introduce additional material to fill gaps between pieces, proper part fit-up is crucial to achieve a strong mechanical bond.
The Synrad laser beam delivery consisted of a 63.5mm focusing lens fixed in place over a rotating stage operating at 100 revolutions per minute (RPM).
The Synrad positive meniscus lens provides a 100-micron focused spot with a 1.8mm depth of focus; however, in this instance, the Z-axis was adjusted and defocused the beam to create the customer-specified 0.51mm diameter weld bead.
Clean and dry air was chosen at 0.7 bar (10 PSI) as the weld assist gas.
The rotational speed and diameter of the acrylic discs translated to a weld velocity of 37.7 meters per minute.
The discs rotated through five complete revolutions during the weld process to achieve the desired weld penetration using 60W of power.
Overall weld cycle time for each set of discs was three seconds.
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