ROFIN to Highlight Laser Welding Equipment for Tubes and Profiles at TUBE 2014

From 7 to 11 April, the international tube community meets at the TUBE 2014 in Düsseldorf. In Hall 6, booth C49, ROFIN presents its range of laser welding equipment for tubes and profiles. With extensive know-how and more than 25 years of experience, the laser specialist is the perfect partner when it comes to laser welding of tubes and profiles.

Whether for underwater lines or heat exchanger tubes made of stainless steel, composite tubes, shelf brackets or guides – thousands of kilometers of tubes and profiles are welded with ROFIN lasers every day.

At this year’s TUBE show, ROFIN will present solutions for welding thin-walled stainless steel tubes and will explain why fiber lasers are ideal for these types of applications. For quality welding in the medium- and thick-walled stainless steel tube area, ROFIN will show why CO₂ lasers are still the first choice for many processes.

„The TUBE show is a very important exposition for us. It puts us into direct contact with users and potential customers where we are able to present our solutions for laser welding of tubes and profiles to a broad audience. During the consulting process we do not focus on a certain type of laser, but rather develop the correct solution together with our customers. Depending on the type of application, we determine whether a CO₂ or a fiber laser is the right beam source,“ commented Stefan Ziesemer, Product Manager and Project Engineer at ROFIN-SINAR Laser GmbH, Hamburg.

ROFIN‘s extensive range of solutions for laser welding of tubes and profiles is based on the Profile Welding System (“PWS“), which will be presented at the fair with a new control and the new “Weld Sensor“. The PWS is a complete laser welding system with integrated process sensors for gap recognition and seam tracking. The new Weld Sensor allows the user to make automatic corrections to the welding position on the joint gap via the integrated control system, in addition to observing the welding process. The new PWS control maintains the tried and proven central operating concept, but also offers additional features. The new features include easier integration to third party or customer controls using an Ethernet-based connection, as well as process-specific functions such as product data storage. The fast precision linear drives, also with a new control concept, continue to ensure the greatest possible production throughput. They facilitate a positional accuracy of the laser beam of just a few μm with welding speeds of up to 60 m/min.

The PWS can be combined with different laser beam sources from ROFIN‘s wide product range and optimally adapted to the requirements of the customers.

The high-brilliant fiber lasers of the ROFIN FL Series with output power of up to 6 kW are ideally suited for welding different stainless steels and also nickel-based custom materials ranging in thicknesses of 80 μm to 150 μm. For these applications, the fiber laser offers significant process benefits against the CO₂ laser. During the welding process of thin materials, only small weld pools are developed and due to this, processes can be realized that are not possible with conventional welding methods.

ROFIN’s well-proven CO₂ Slab lasers with output power of up to 8 kW and an excellent beam quality of K = 0.95 are best suited for welding wall thicknesses ranging from 1 mm to 8 mm.

With a 3 kW CO₂ laser (ROFIN DC 030) and a 2 kW fiber laser (ROFIN FL 020), ROFIN will be presenting one of each of the two main laser technologies at the TUBE fair.