Comprehensive Welding of Thermoplastics by a Diode Laser

Abstract

This paper deals with a development of “comprehensive" laser welding of thermoplastics with versatility in color and shape of products. Overlap welding of thermoplastics is one of the features of application of diode lasers. Most of thermoplastics are transparent to diode lasers; therefore it is need to weld plastic article with colorant. The influence of absorptance and transmittance of overlapping colored plastics were studied. Various colored plastics with infrared-transparent pigments were tested as the welding material. The appropriate absorptance and transmittance of overlapping colored plastic were examined. The feasibility of the technique of welding of transparent plastics using infrared-absorbing layer was also investigated. The temperature distribution within the plastics was calculated by numerical simulation in order to estimate the validity of the proposing experimental systems. It was confirmed by the experiments that the 35μm film, which shows only 10% in absorptance is enough to weld a pair of transparent articles as infrared-absorbing layer.