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Article: Plastics welding: the choices widen: the many ways to weld plastics include well-established technologies such as heat staking, hot-plate, ultrasonic and vibration welding, recently adopted methods like infrared and laser welding, and technologies looking for applications, such as microwave welding. You'd think that would be enough; you'd be wrong.(EUROPE)
- Article from:
- Plastics Engineering
- Article date:
- April 1, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 Society of Plastics Engineers, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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It's still a minority technology, but since its industrial introduction in the late 1990s, laser welding has proven itself an elegant joining method for plastics. Its advantages are numerous: energy input takes place without contact and without application of force; delicate and mechanically sensitive parts can be readily welded; heat input is precisely defined; and during the welding process, there is no abrasion and no bead formation at the weld.
The rapid market acceptance of laser welding is not only because of innovations in equipment, but also because of materials developed specifically for the technology. Laser welding ...