PENETRATION WELDING OF PLASTICS USING A TUNABLE CO_2 LASER WITH A TRANSPARENT HEAT SINK

摘要

This paper deals with penetration welding of overlapped polypropylene (PP) sheets using a tunable CO_2 laser with a transparent heat sink. The melt depth in the overlapped PP sheets can be controlled up to approximately 1mm by slight wavelength change in the tunable CO_2 laser. No thermal damage nor surface melting occurred in the PP sheets. Both experiments and numerical simulations were carried out to clarify the effect of wavelength selection on controllability of the melt depth.