High-power fiber laser welding and its application to metallic glass Zr55Al10Ni5Cu30

Fiber laser has been receiving attention due to its advantages of high-power and high-beam quality to produce narrow and deep penetration welds at high-welding speeds. Therefore, fiber laser welding is expected to apply to the joining of metallic glass which has unique properties such as high-mechanical strength or small solidification shrinkage, because extremely rapid quenching for the laser weldment or heat-affected zone (HAZ) is possible to remain amorphous. In this research, fiber laser welding was first performed with the objective of obtaining a fundamental knowledge of weld property produced in bead-on-plate welding for common marital such as Type 304 stainless steel with 6kW fiber laser beams of several peak power densities. Deeply penetrated weld beads with narrow widths were produced with small spots of tightly focused laser beams and full-penetration welds in 8 mm thick plate could be obtained at the high-welding speed of 4.5 m/min. Subsequently, the tightly focused 2.5 kW fiber laser beam was applied to 72 m/min ultra-high-speed welding for metallic glass Zr55Al10Ni5Cu30 in order to keep amorphous metals. Consequently, the weldment and HAZ remained desirably amorphous at ultra-high-welding speed with a tightly focused fiber laser beam. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.