Problems in laser repair welding of polished surfaces

Abstract

This paper presents problems in laser repair welding of the tools for injection moulding of plastics and light metals. Tools for injection moulding of the car headlamps are highly polished in order to get a desirable quality of the injected part. Different light metals, glasses, elastomers, thermoplastics and thermosetting polymers are injected into the die cavity under high pressures resulting in the surface damages of the tool. Laser welding is the only suitable repair welding technique due to the very limited sputtering during deposition of the filler metal. Overlapping of the welds results in inhomogeneous hardness of the remanufactured surface. Results have shown strong correlation between hardness and surface waviness after final polishing of the repair welded surface.

Keywords

• laser welding
• injection moulding
• polishing
• repair welding
• hardness