from the conferences organized by TANGER Ltd.
Material AZ61A of thickness 1 mm was laser welded by disc laser without using filler wire. Laser welding w/o filler wire is very demanding on sheet metal edges preparation, so different methods of edge preparation, e.g. shearing, milling, were done. Mg alloys have susceptibility to porosity, evaporation of alloying elements, spattering hot cracking and other. The research focused on finding optimum laser welding parameters for butt and lap welds. Welds were evaluated by optical metallography, visual and penetration test, SEM, microhardness and tensile strength etc. The sheet metal edges for butt welds must be prepared by milling, otherwise porosity was found. Edge quality was not important for lap joint welds, which is an advantage. Laser welding had very good weld quality, without any defect, yet the processing window was narrow.
Keywords: magnesium alloy, laser beam welding, AZ61A© This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.