Mar 20 2009
Fabricators looking for alternatives to using pure helium as a shielding gas in high power laser welding now have more options: Linde North America has introduced two new, LASGON H shielding gas mixtures that lower operating costs and increase welding speed and product quality.
Linde North America is a member of The Linde Group, a world-leading gases and engineering company. The new LASGON H gas mixtures combine helium, hydrogen and argon in special formulations for laser welding of stainless steel with CO2 and solid state lasers.
“Higher helium prices and tighter supplies have led fabricators to seek out less expensive shielding gas mixtures that enable them to maintain high product quality,” said Joe Berkmanns, manufacturing segment manager, Linde North America.
“Linde’s LASGON® H product line lowers fabricators’ operating costs, while enabling them to boost productivity through higher welding speeds. What’s more, the LASGON® gas mixtures create less oxide buildup than pure noble gases, resulting in a clean, shiny weld surface. It’s truly a win-win product for the laser welder,” Berkmanns said.
While targeting CO2 laser welding operations, the LASGON® H3 mixtures can also be applied to solid state lasers such as disc, diode and fiber lasers which, compared with CO2 gas lasers, produce light with a shorter wavelength allowing for an easier helium substitution. These solid state lasers are generally used when non-linear welding or three-dimensional welding applications require delivery of the beam through a flexible optical fiber.
The LASGON® H mixtures are an outgrowth of Linde’s LASERLINE® program, which consists of a complete line of products and services managed by a global team of experts and developed with support of Linde’s application development group. The program offers a complete line of resonator gases (from pure to complex, six-component mixtures), high-quality supply equipment (from change-over manifolds to pressure-booster solutions), as well as a wide variety of process gases for laser welding and cutting.
Berkmanns said, “LASGON® H is the latest addition to Linde’s line of shielding gases for laser welding. It complements the LASGON® C1 mixture that Linde introduced several years ago to replace pure helium in laser welding of carbon steel.”