Product Code: ICA11_1506

Orbital Cutting and Welding of Stainless Steel Tubes with a Fiber Laser
Authors:
Mikko Vänskä, Lappeenranta University of Technology; Lappeenranta Finland
Tuomas Purtonen, Lappeenranta University of Technology; Lappeenranta Finland
Antti Salminen, Lappeenranta University of Technology, Machine Technology Centre Turku Ltd.; Lappeenranta Finland
Presented at ICALEO 2011

Orbital welding is used in pipeline construction and prefabrication, semiautomatic GTA-, GMA- and GMA-tandem welding processes are most commonly used but also manual metal arc welding is still in use. Traditional welding processes have limitations concerning welding speed and penetration. Modern laser technology allows the use of high power with small focal point, which results in deep penetration and high welding speed. Modern solid state lasers generate a beam with wavelength around 1 µm which can be transported with a flexible optical fibre. This simplifies the beam delivery. With a modern solid state laser it is possible to perform cutting and welding with the same laser and changing of the processing head can be done relatively fast. Orbital system that has the possibility to use two processing heads can perform joint edge cutting as well as welding with a single laser source and with same orbital tractor. This could improve weld quality and decrease cycle time in tube to tube welding. This paper presents orbital cutting and orbital welding processes, parameters and test results altogether with the principle of an orbital system.