Improved inert gas protection - for laser weld and metal deposition processes

• Main Author: Grindeland, Andreas
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: KTH, Industriell produktion 2011
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-40433

The purpose of this thesis was to create a requirement specification for a shielding gas chamber for laser welding and/or laser metal deposition. This to improve the understanding of requirements that are needed for a chamber being able to be used in full production at Volvo Aero, Trollhättan. During welding in Titanium it is very important to protect welding areas from oxygen. The idea of using a chamber instead of local shielding is not new. However, when there are many welds to be performed in the same operation and/or the access to shield the weld (or rootside of weld) is difficult it might be advantages to use a chamber. For metal deposition it is even more difficult (and thereby costly) to use local shielding.The information and results have been gathered from daily interviews with operators and engineers with experience of welding and metal deposition. Internal documents, literature and participating in the manufacturing process have also contributed.The conclusion of the work led up to a list of requirements for a shielding gas chamber that will be used when welding or metal deposition are performed on components for the aerospace industry. It is not the design of the chamber that has been achieved with this work; it is the requirement for the chamber that will influence the design of the shielding gas chamber.During this work it was clear that some parts were more important than others: How to realize an oxygen free atmosphere Temperature in the chamber Materials for the chamberThe difficult part of finding essential information was the fact that nothing was found if any other company uses the same welding technology along with the material used.The combination of flexibility, high temperature resistance and transparency properties reduce the number of avalible materials to choose from to build a chamber. However, the result that the temperature reached inside the chamber was lower than expected made it possible for more materials to meet the requirements.