Laser Welded Sections

Laser welding is our most pop­u­lar pro­duc­tion method because it is so effi­cient, and it offers nearly limitless capa­bil­i­ties and design options. Laser welded sections are pro­duced by weld­ing indi­vid­ual com­po­nents together, creating a com­plete sec­tion. The pieces are typ­i­cally flat laser cut strips, but may also be pre­-fab­ri­cated solids, hol­lows or other shapes. The joints are cre­ated with pow­er­ful lasers with­out any filler mate­r­ial, pro­duc­ing a minute weld bead. Vir­tu­ally all com­mer­cially avail­able car­bon and stain­less steels can be laser welded along with the appro­pri­ate approvals and cer­ti­fi­ca­tions. Our lasers have the capa­bil­ity of cut­ting mate­r­ial up to 1–1/2” thick. Mono­lithic, homo­ge­neous welds are eas­ily attain­able through a depth of 1-1/2”. Laser welded sections can be produced in car­bon steel, stain­less steel and duplex steel pro­files, among others. Laser welding is a type of laser fusion but does not use any filler mate­r­ial in its process.

Laser welded sec­tions inher­ently fea­ture sharp edges and gen­er­ally have small radii mea­sur­ing a max­i­mum of .02″. With the use of lasers in laser weld­ing and fus­ing, there is a very small heat affected zone when com­pared to tra­di­tional pro­duc­tion meth­ods. Laser welded sections can be man­u­fac­tured as tees, chan­nels, angles, beams and other sec­tions. Hol­low struc­turals are also avail­able as well as square or rec­tan­gu­lar tubing. These can be made in almost any size with a small min­i­mum order. The com­po­nents can have dif­fer­ent thick­nesses and even dif­fer­ent grades of mate­ri­als fused into one sec­tion.

Our laser welded sections can be pro­duced in quan­ti­ties as small as a single piece for a prototype study, all the way up to quan­ti­ties of 100 tons or more for large scale projects. Typ­i­cal max­i­mum pro­duc­tion length is 45 feet, max­i­mum width 40”and a max­i­mum height of 80”. Small sec­tions (1” X 1”) can be pro­duced as well, with a min­i­mum thick­ness of 1/8”. Most pro­duc­tion con­sists of mate­r­ial laser fused at a 90° angle, but it is pos­si­ble to weld at other angles. Even round mate­ri­als can be joined with flat edges. Some­times it is nec­es­sary to flat­ten the round mate­r­ial at the con­tact point for these custom geometries.

Laser welded stain­less pro­files gen­er­ally have a bet­ter sur­face fin­ish than extruded or hot rolled prod­ucts because the raw com­po­nents are processed from high qual­ity hot rolled plate or from cold drawn flats. Upon being laser welded, the sec­tions are straight­ened, bead blasted and pas­si­vated in an acid solu­tion. Passivating removes any impu­ri­ties introduced during the production process. Angle, channel and box sec­tions are typ­i­cally machined prior to bead blast­ing because they often con­tain exter­nal weld beads. Removing these exter­nal beads makes the finished sur­face flat and even. Our laser welded sec­tions go through a strin­gent qual­ity con­trol process, involv­ing con­tin­u­ous checks with spe­cial mea­sur­ing equip­ment. This mea­sur­ing equip­ment is checked at reg­u­lar inter­vals by TÜV (exter­nal approv­ing author­ity) to ver­ify its reli­a­bil­ity. The sec­tions are there­fore sup­plied with appro­pri­ate cer­tifi­cates and approvals.

Load­bear­ing sec­tions are cer­ti­fied and approved per ASTM specifications. Laser welded sec­tions are ideal for use in nearly any industry; power generation, food pro­cess­ing, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal manufacturing, chemical process con­trol, waste water sys­tems, architecture, build­ing & con­struc­tion, and oil & gas are just a few. Our laser welded stain­less sec­tions are also very pop­u­lar with landscape architects, interior designers, and furniture designers.