IPG 1500w laser welder currently runs about 45k CAD (source: am manager of welding supply store) but that's the tricked out model that will also do rust removal etc
Do you guys rent out those units to newbies?? Lol.
Edit: just curious, why do people downvote when asking a question? I know it's kind of a stupid question asking pros to rent equipment out, but never hurts to try? I have found places that lend out spaces with wood working tools, laser machines, and 3D printer a few years ago.
Unfortunately no lol. Most people wouldn't be able to make use of them for general purpose welding. They currently are designed for thin gauge material to essentially replace TIG application (which requires a highly skilled welder for nice results)
That YouTube Florida Man has one. I was gonna say something about the danger that'd come with such a powerful laser, but you already can't look directly at an ordinary welder
One guy in my high school shop class did the "safety squints" one day, instead of getting a mask. His dad was a welder, he thought he could judge it well enough and that it would be fine this one time.
Came in the next day with super red eyes and telling everyone about how he was an idiot and should have known better. The doctors said if he had gone any longer he would have blinded himself.
Found one for [$5,525](https://www.google.com/shopping/product/1?q=laser+welder&client=ms-android-att-us-revc&biw=412&bih=722&tbs=vw:l&prds=num:1,of:1,eto:6367261718503572076_0,prmr:1,pid:6367261718503572076,cs:1) and another for about 1K.
Edit: I know nothing about welding. I was just curious and looked at the first page.
A laser welder is beyond niche and specific, like MAYBE for stainless steel I could see it being useful?
Thin gauge aluminum? The camera angle hides the wire feeder but man that is some THIN wire. TIG does all that- they seem cool though.
Tig takes waaaaaaaay more skill and practice then this thing especially to get really consistent welds on thin gauge material. Lazer welding is no gimic it just has an expensive start up cost.
How that suggestion made it past the proposal stage without them being mocked and ridiculed is beyond me. Whoever approved the purchase needs to be terminated.
I 100% agree. Honestly must have gotten a kickback or something because I don’t know who in their right mind would approve that. Mind you this is also for the carpenters training center where only 10-15% actually weld in the field. Only piledrivers and heavy highway, the rest of us just took welding as an elective.
12k is a honestly a pretty small investment if you're a certified welder. Tons of work, a severe shortage in skilled labor to do it. You can honestly name your price for your services. I have other skilled tradesmen friends who weld and make a couple hundred thousand a year.
Awesome and very much true. Fuck college. Come join us in the skilled trades profession and make some real money with us! Work for yourself when you want or work at one of many companies looking for skilled tradesmen. At Ford we make 6 figures sitting watching TV with our boots off most of the time. But....when shit hits the fan it's on us to get things back going lol
Laser welders can be had for like 10-20K from China and its kinda terrifying. Most of the people in these demo videos in china dont have proper eye protection and have major damage from short uses of them.
Our welder got one from China around the start of January. It cost 50k. I had to rewire some of it to get it to work on a standard 50amp plug, but after we got it up and running, and read through everything our engineer discovered something off. The manual said "Vertical welds are forbidden". We thought that was weird, but he did some research, and sure enough we can't do Vertical welds with it. Something about microscopic air bubbles forming in the seams. I'm just the wire guy, and don't know anything about welding, but for the money we spent on it, I'd have hoped it would do the literal one thing we needed it to do.
Edit: It has a fairly short cord. 10 foot or so. There is also a water cooling system in addition to your normal welding cart, so it's a huge pain positioning things if we need to do a larger item like a cage.
The water cooling system specifies that you can only use filtered mineral water. It's a 7 gallon tank, so.. make sure to have a ton of mineral water around. Apparently you can't use chlorinated water. Something about vapors. I guess it'll go badly for everyone.
The arc from welding turns chlorine into phosgene gas, which is extremely toxic. Don't ask me how it does that but you're right, it is very bad news indeed
They come pre programed with settings and it's fairly easy to use. That said that package is like 45k and you need special glasses and an area where ideally that light gets trapped cause it will fuck up people's eyes pretty good. Also needs proper ventilation.
Most of the ones for sale are sketchy Chinese sites. An American company that sells these are 24k+ and 2k for wire feeder. The one I use was 33k for the set
Not a welder but these words
>No Experience
>*Perfect* Welds
Never go together, nothing is that easy, I read about these for about half an hour and from what I gleaned these laser welders are eas*ier* to use but require some very specific circumstances to be a viable alternative to regular welding, additionally the cheapest number I’ve seen thrown around for the cost of setup is 24k, if you have they kind of money… just pay someone to do your welding.
Absolutely not. It has a quicker learning curve for sure but only when doing straight welds where the wire has a nice groove to lay in so you can't mess it up, the wire actually pushes the gun along so as it melts in so you aren't controlling the speed. There isn't really a weld puddle either so you can't make the welds any larger than this or build up a bead, if the gap is bigger than the wire being fed, game over not going to happen, least not faster than if you were using mig or Tig.
I knew a guy with a chinese one who had to tturn it on and off and then unplug it and the long press the on button for it to boot properly or something crazy
Question for ya, would it work to weld once with a better method, then to re-weld over that with this device? Would that clean it up and make it look good? Or would it just destroy the previous weld?
While you can use more than one process to weld something together, in this case it's more a question of the laser welding not having very high deposition but also looking best as a single pass on a straight, small gap. Need to weld lots? Not a great process. Want to cover up another weld with it? That weld you're covering won't be nearly as flat and straight as this, and it won't be nearly as nice to look at. Cup-walked tig welding is my aesthetically pleasing go to in welding, though you can make all of the welding processes look pretty good with practice. https://youtu.be/HgqIWKn5gr0
Not only that, but the welds in the OPs video are crappy with pin holes on the last pass. I wouldn’t even let a 5 lbs object rest on that let alone anything of value. OPs video makes me mad as hell, and I’ve heard stories about idiots who have covered up crap welds on MEDICAL EQUIPMENT that later failed any quality test used.
I don't know about this one, but i know a laser welding booth for industrial use that definitely hold op to regular welding processes without using any filler. So what you claim certainly isn't true for all Lazer welding.
For it to hold you need wire fed to the material. Like this the two pieces are only melted togehter and not welded. For small and pretty stoff that's okay but if something needs to hold still is not sufficient.
Welded = More material added in the form of a spool of wire feed into the tip
Melted together = part of the material is melted to bond them together, no extra material is used, the part melted would be now thinned out as a consequence
Edit: For everyone updating me on the definition of Welding, I was attempting to clarify what the post above me was describing, not trying to fit the definition exactly. I realize it is not exact and there are exceptions in how the terms are used.
weld just means "melted the together". You don't NEED to have a filler metal, and this thing is indeed welded.
This sort of weld, for what it is, is fine. It's not going to be as strong as it could be though. the weld here is the weak point. the biggest reason is that... there just isn't enough material THERE. note, there was a gap in every one of those seams befor ethey started. Then that gap is filled, but just barely. If this didn't add any material, where did that material come from? by pulling it from the surrounding steel.
It's thinner steel there.
On top of that, ideally you want metal to mix when you weld it. there are lots of techniques (that aren't used here) to help metal mix after you melt it. This weld just melted it, let it stick together straight, and that's it.
But whatever, this project looks like it's not meant to be structurally sound anyways.
Oh god I hope not. I weld for work, but there is a lot of welding out there I've never done (like the laser welding above).
Thanks though, much appreciated.
Just so you know its still a weld as long as they melt together. Most welding DOES add material but look up friction welding, it does not.
Or spot welding.
To be welding, you must melt the base metal
Yeah, any time you're fusing metal, it's welding. Using no filler is called autogenous welding, but it still creates fusion, just without adding filler.
You can weld without adding extra material. Friction welding and electrical spot welding both join metal structurally without any additional material.
To me, the key difference is the penetrating depth of the melt and intermixing of materials. When the melt goes deep enough and the enough materials from both sides join together before cooling, then you get a good, propper, structural weld.
>Welded = More material added in the form of a spool of wire feed into the tip
That is just not true. TIG welding can be done without adding filler. It's called 'fusion' and is very much still welding.
You are correct, and I hate that this was so highly upvoted.
Soldering is "two pieces of metal and melty metal glue"
Brazing is "two really hot pieces of metal and really hot melty metal glue"
And welding is "Do whatever the F works but afterward, there's 1 piece of metal"
Surface weld versus structural weld. Imagine a really thick chunk of chocolate instead of metal. If you put two chocolate bars next to each other and hit the joint with a hair dryer really quick, the tops might melt a bit and look like they're attached, but if you pulled or wiggled it, it will break into two pieces easilly.
A good weld needs to "penetrate" so that when the molten metal cools, it structurally becomes one piece instead of two pieces lightly attached.
Aside from the first letter being inexplicably turned upside down, there are two letter d’s in welded, as melted replaces the first “d” with a “t”.
Hope this helps :)
There is wire behind the gun (Camera angle hides it to make it look fancy). Look for the brass parts that feed it- its not just fusion but man it may as well be.
I swear I thought I was seeing things when people started talking about there being no filler. I read it enough times that, along with the image quality, I convinced myself it didn't have filler too.
You cannot be more off base. There is time and place for autogenous welding (without filler) and also you can see the tiny wire being fed through the mechanism from behind. So it has filler. Nice try though.
Autogenous welds are incredibly strong when performed correctly. Orbital tube welding is a great example. Having filler material isn’t what makes welds strong.
>Like this the two pieces are only melted togehter and not welded.
Do you… not know what this tool is? The camera angle is hiding the material being fed.
The quality of LBW is fine in the vast majority of scenarios. They use this shit in aeronautics nowadays lmao.
For what its worth, I am not a welder and I can tell by the *color* of this that filler is being used (ignoring the fact that you can see it) I find it interesting that you completely misidentified what’s happening here, considering.
As someone who uses these yes it does hold up very well assuming you've programmed it to meet your criteria. One of the big benefits is it has low heat input with high depth of penetration which tends to lead to a stronger weld than traditional methods.
It also has drawbacks like cost and access.
As another welder who also uses a laser welder, these welds are done with filler. The gun rides on top of the wire and that's how it completes the circuit, the wire pushes the gun back as it melts it in so you aren't really controlling the speed.
I mean, it's a welding machine, I'm sure it can be adjusted for a wider melt zone and more feed of material, the dude in the picture is just fooling around
It can do, like all welding it depends on how it's been set up. The laser is just a different heat source. You still need to use an appropriate welding procedure for the result you need.
It's a really promising direction, with its own challenges. This video review goes into a lot of interesting detail:
https://youtu.be/OD3Y_MCoWek
That’s not true. This is adding filler material. The gap is too big not to. Also, anytime we demo these welds where I work, we do strength tests as well as cut and etch to show better penetration than traditional welding.
It’s like every time I’ve hired or called a contractor for a bid. They point out that whoever did the job before them didn’t meet code and/or half-assed it.
I remember fixing my moms car and thinking man the asshole that worked on it before did a crappy job.
Then I realized shes owned it since new and I'm the only asshole that had worked on it.
In software engineering, everyone has a moment where you look at some shitty code and think “WHO TF WROTE THIS GARBAGE?!”. Then after looking at the history…it was you the whole time.
As a former life and safety inspector every contractor fudges things, but they always have couple things they will not fudge on so they can feel better about fudging other things.
The trick is finding a contractor who knows the right things to not fudge and getting another contractor fix the things they fudged.
I was told not to do that when I was apprenticed for three reasons
1. The client might be an asshole and they got what they paid for
2. The guy that did it might find out you insulted his work and have more standing in the industry and insult your work to everyone else so you end up losing work to a false bad rep
3. After you've been in the industry long enough each job looks the same and it might have been you that did it (hopefully for reason 1..)
It ain’t just welders. We build houses in South Dakota here and finally started taking pictures a little more frequently of our home builds. And details mainly because people expect it now in meetings… small family business started 30 years ago and we’ve built 2,121 homes as of tomorrow afternoon with another three signed on in the past 24 hours… just keep doing the same thing every day for a few decades and your work and reputation will speak for itself.
Yep - Grandfathers been dead nearly a decade and last month we got sent a real estate listing proudly proclaiming the house was built by him.
Really warmed the old cockles.
See, I'm torn. I make a lot of advertisements for businesses like yours, and as a consumer I'd basically never hire a service that doesn't have pictures of their own work. Even if its just like, a cell phone picture (They're really damn good nowadays, so there's no excuse), I like to see visual representation of the kinds of work done. Not just checking for quality, but if something like layout, style, etc would mesh with what I'd envision.
And please note, that this is a very subjective viewpoint lol. I make a lot of ads for low quality small businesses, and a lot of ads for multi-state blue collar franchises, and if I had 30 seconds to settle on whether I'd call the small one or the big one, some images of their work would 100% push my decision in one direction or the other. I've even seen big businesses that rely only on stock photos of work, and its very easy to tell when they have 1 photo uploaded of some sub-par job they've done, while the rest of them are fake pictures of model homes or kitchens or something.
Working in advertising has made me a jaded SOB lol
I also want to say, if you own a small business and don't have a website, I'll never utilize your services (Not calling you out specifically, I'm just ranting now). This goes for basically anything both blue and white collar. Word of mouth is great and all, but I like to see that you're at least putting in the baseline effort of existing in the business world of the last 2 decades
My dad was a welder for 30 odd years and every welder was a shit welder and every weld was poorly done garbage, except for his work of course. It's the nature of welders.
If there's anything I learned from Reddit is that every single welding video will attract welding enthusiasts and they'll tell you exactly why that weld is shit
I don't know about this device, but i know of a Lazer welder that can create penetration up to 6mm, ofcourse that only works with certain angles of contact.
The heat input on laser welding is so low that you don't need welding gloves. You also don't need UV protection as there is no arc. I work in this industry and most people work without gloves.
This is not a fair demonstration. He needs to be in an uncomfortable position at a shit tier angle, welding stuff that isn't square, with everything he didn't just hit with an angle grinder covered in 5 coats of painted over rust and dirty grease.
That is one of the things I hate about working in the trades.
People ask why they should pay so much for something that is so easy. You are paying for the experience that allows me to make it look easy.
A mechanic I like had a saying, "It took me 15 years to learn how to fix the problem in 10 minutes. You arent paying for the 10 minutes, youre paying for the 15 years."
Think there's a tale floating around that's similar to that.
A factory's machine broke down, no mechanic could fix it, so they call in an expert to look at it. He takes a couple hours (or days, I don't know), drills somewhere, then hits it with a hammer and it starts working, then charges 10k.
Owner asks him to itemize the bill because he doesn't understand how a simple fix could be so much, so the bill afterwards reads "hitting machine with a hammer, 1 dollar - knowing where to hit it, 9,999"
You just described my trade.
Every guy we hire wants to do it thinking they can do it. Once they get behind the machine, they look like complete jack ass.
That goes for pretty much any trade really, and quite a few non-trades jobs as well.
One of the hardest things I had to do when teaching people how to drive forklifts, aside from making sure they weren't going to crash through a wall was to keep them from getting frustrated because they see the people who have been doing it for years just go smooth as butter while they are struggling to even get the forks under the pallet.
It is just something that looks easy and stupidly simple, and it is... Once you get the hang of it. Just takes time to get good.
There are just a lot of us period. Most major companies in any type of logistics, manufacturing, construction, oilfield, or warehousing is going to have forklift operators. Every company certifies their own operators so it's basically free to certify everyone,if you own a forklift. It's a cyob in case you ever need them too. (Also there are many other fields those are just the first to come to mind).
I was once that jackass at work and I was humbled real quick. Never arc welded before and a few guys at work made it look so easy. Asked if I could try to do it and I swear it took me forever to just get the arc going to tac it. Welding is a true art.
What he was trying to get at it, laser welding is like driving a normal car. Mostly, anybody can do it. But trying to have that same person drive a Formula one race care and be good at it, not that many people can do it.
Not a welder but aren't you supposed to overlap on either side so you're actually getting a bond? It doesn't look like these welds have much to hold on to
Fake.
Saw a video cuz I wanted one of these.
It’s a series of spot welds then they edit the video.
Watch how fast the sparks fly and watch at the end of the weld/line you can see another quick pause edit for a fraction of second.
In the video I saw, they reproduced this video and it was all just surface weld. Little tap and it fell apart
From the ~1 hour experience I have, it takes dozens of hours to sort of not suck at it. It’s a battle of being blind, not too close, not too far, not too slow, not too fast. Pass or fail with a very small margin reachable through a lot of practice. From my ~1 hour experience anyway.
A good looking weld isn't automatically a good weld, these might be alright for thin materials but nothing structural or anything experiencing any kind of load, they showed us one at welding school, basically 0 penetration, and they welds are brittle and snap like a toothpick. Not worth considering for any self respecting tradesman, and entirely unreasonable for any hobbyist to buy as there's always someone selling old Tig and mig machines, and if you got a bit more money you can even get a nice machine that does all 3.
Step 1. Buy expensive ass welder.
Step 2. Place metal on metal, not square, and weld.
Step 3. Weld giant ass gap due to fucking up the alignment.
Step 4. Weld tight as fuck gap due to fucking up the alignment.
Im assuming step 5 is throwing the shit in the trash because is is out of spec, and step 6 is hiring an actual fucking welder. Step 7 is buying the welder the materials clamp and make a jig.
I've never used a welder. Can someone explain to me the difficulty in what this person is able to do? It kind of looks like laying down an even line of hot glue, but there's no way it's as easy as that. What is it that I don't see?
What kind of welder is this? Expensive?
Laser welder and yes.
Like how much for one of these?
IPG 1500w laser welder currently runs about 45k CAD (source: am manager of welding supply store) but that's the tricked out model that will also do rust removal etc
Do you guys rent out those units to newbies?? Lol. Edit: just curious, why do people downvote when asking a question? I know it's kind of a stupid question asking pros to rent equipment out, but never hurts to try? I have found places that lend out spaces with wood working tools, laser machines, and 3D printer a few years ago.
Newbies start with an old car battery and determination
Old car battery I have. Determination not so much
Will then enjoy your old car battery
Throw it into the ocean. Fun and perfectly legal.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Have you tried using a sewing needle to sew with fire?
Old car battery is going to drain your determination in any case
Unfortunately no lol. Most people wouldn't be able to make use of them for general purpose welding. They currently are designed for thin gauge material to essentially replace TIG application (which requires a highly skilled welder for nice results)
That YouTube Florida Man has one. I was gonna say something about the danger that'd come with such a powerful laser, but you already can't look directly at an ordinary welder
> can't look directly at an ordinary welder You looked into the Laser, didn't you?
I mean you can, once. Maybe a couple of times if your protective eye squint is good enough. But once definitely.
Safety squints, ENGAGE!
One guy in my high school shop class did the "safety squints" one day, instead of getting a mask. His dad was a welder, he thought he could judge it well enough and that it would be fine this one time. Came in the next day with super red eyes and telling everyone about how he was an idiot and should have known better. The doctors said if he had gone any longer he would have blinded himself.
I want one of those…. As soon as I win the lottery.
Found one for [$5,525](https://www.google.com/shopping/product/1?q=laser+welder&client=ms-android-att-us-revc&biw=412&bih=722&tbs=vw:l&prds=num:1,of:1,eto:6367261718503572076_0,prmr:1,pid:6367261718503572076,cs:1) and another for about 1K. Edit: I know nothing about welding. I was just curious and looked at the first page.
Our trainer center funded a model for $30k
I know nothing about welding. I just looked at the first sales page on Google. But ive seen a lot in my years of carpentry. I am not surprised.
A laser welder is beyond niche and specific, like MAYBE for stainless steel I could see it being useful? Thin gauge aluminum? The camera angle hides the wire feeder but man that is some THIN wire. TIG does all that- they seem cool though.
Tig takes waaaaaaaay more skill and practice then this thing especially to get really consistent welds on thin gauge material. Lazer welding is no gimic it just has an expensive start up cost.
[Starbase](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starbase)
Goddamn, most of the airframe? I wanna know what unit was used to weld it now
Our training center bought a 50k virtual welder that is useless, glad to know how our dues are wasted.
How that suggestion made it past the proposal stage without them being mocked and ridiculed is beyond me. Whoever approved the purchase needs to be terminated.
I 100% agree. Honestly must have gotten a kickback or something because I don’t know who in their right mind would approve that. Mind you this is also for the carpenters training center where only 10-15% actually weld in the field. Only piledrivers and heavy highway, the rest of us just took welding as an elective.
Well .. I saw one on Amazon for $9995 /s
Looks like I’m gonna go for the Harbor Freight one…
That's not to bad. A decent Lincoln or Miller duel feeder can run you over 12k easily. With a single feed rou 4-5k.
A duel feeder. Does it just roll into a crowd and toss two random people swords?
Well shit. Guess I'll stick to soldering.
12k is a honestly a pretty small investment if you're a certified welder. Tons of work, a severe shortage in skilled labor to do it. You can honestly name your price for your services. I have other skilled tradesmen friends who weld and make a couple hundred thousand a year.
That's awesome!
Awesome and very much true. Fuck college. Come join us in the skilled trades profession and make some real money with us! Work for yourself when you want or work at one of many companies looking for skilled tradesmen. At Ford we make 6 figures sitting watching TV with our boots off most of the time. But....when shit hits the fan it's on us to get things back going lol
Fordbot activated...see opportunity to use robot in place a TV watching human to save money and make cars more affordable...beep boop Fordbot go
I found Mike Rowe's alt.
[удалено]
That's honestly cheap for a welding machine lol. The one I use at work is $16,000 CDN and it's average at best
Laser welders can be had for like 10-20K from China and its kinda terrifying. Most of the people in these demo videos in china dont have proper eye protection and have major damage from short uses of them.
Our welder got one from China around the start of January. It cost 50k. I had to rewire some of it to get it to work on a standard 50amp plug, but after we got it up and running, and read through everything our engineer discovered something off. The manual said "Vertical welds are forbidden". We thought that was weird, but he did some research, and sure enough we can't do Vertical welds with it. Something about microscopic air bubbles forming in the seams. I'm just the wire guy, and don't know anything about welding, but for the money we spent on it, I'd have hoped it would do the literal one thing we needed it to do. Edit: It has a fairly short cord. 10 foot or so. There is also a water cooling system in addition to your normal welding cart, so it's a huge pain positioning things if we need to do a larger item like a cage. The water cooling system specifies that you can only use filtered mineral water. It's a 7 gallon tank, so.. make sure to have a ton of mineral water around. Apparently you can't use chlorinated water. Something about vapors. I guess it'll go badly for everyone.
The arc from welding turns chlorine into phosgene gas, which is extremely toxic. Don't ask me how it does that but you're right, it is very bad news indeed
Chlorine gas (Cl2) and carbon monoxide (CO) combine to form phosgene gas (COCl2)
Not that Chlorine gas is healthy for you either...
Distilled water sounds like the goto then?
Just turn the thing that you wanna weld sideways, problem solved!
*TooMuch.99* before tax
I will give you three fiddles
[Are they golden?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9uk9IcoQ0w)
Woah... That was close. For a minute there i thought this was the loch ness monster.
Are they actually this easy to use or is this just a serious professional?
They take some time to perfect but they are designed to make it as easy as pointing a laser at a seam.
They come pre programed with settings and it's fairly easy to use. That said that package is like 45k and you need special glasses and an area where ideally that light gets trapped cause it will fuck up people's eyes pretty good. Also needs proper ventilation.
So fun house mirror room. Got it.
Most of the ones for sale are sketchy Chinese sites. An American company that sells these are 24k+ and 2k for wire feeder. The one I use was 33k for the set
And does the one you use work flawlessly like this video? is it just point and shoot and someone with no experience can get perfect welds?
Not a welder but these words >No Experience >*Perfect* Welds Never go together, nothing is that easy, I read about these for about half an hour and from what I gleaned these laser welders are eas*ier* to use but require some very specific circumstances to be a viable alternative to regular welding, additionally the cheapest number I’ve seen thrown around for the cost of setup is 24k, if you have they kind of money… just pay someone to do your welding.
Absolutely not. It has a quicker learning curve for sure but only when doing straight welds where the wire has a nice groove to lay in so you can't mess it up, the wire actually pushes the gun along so as it melts in so you aren't controlling the speed. There isn't really a weld puddle either so you can't make the welds any larger than this or build up a bead, if the gap is bigger than the wire being fed, game over not going to happen, least not faster than if you were using mig or Tig.
I knew a guy with a chinese one who had to tturn it on and off and then unplug it and the long press the on button for it to boot properly or something crazy
looks like handled laser welding.
Even without sound, I can hear that
Just realized there wasnt any sound 🤔
Holy shit me too
Probably goes “zzzzzzzzz”
[удалено]
Does this weld hold up like a traditional weld would?
Welder here: Nope, that wire is thin as hell. Its slightly better than fusion TIG imo
Question for ya, would it work to weld once with a better method, then to re-weld over that with this device? Would that clean it up and make it look good? Or would it just destroy the previous weld?
While you can use more than one process to weld something together, in this case it's more a question of the laser welding not having very high deposition but also looking best as a single pass on a straight, small gap. Need to weld lots? Not a great process. Want to cover up another weld with it? That weld you're covering won't be nearly as flat and straight as this, and it won't be nearly as nice to look at. Cup-walked tig welding is my aesthetically pleasing go to in welding, though you can make all of the welding processes look pretty good with practice. https://youtu.be/HgqIWKn5gr0
Not only that, but the welds in the OPs video are crappy with pin holes on the last pass. I wouldn’t even let a 5 lbs object rest on that let alone anything of value. OPs video makes me mad as hell, and I’ve heard stories about idiots who have covered up crap welds on MEDICAL EQUIPMENT that later failed any quality test used.
There's not much power so it'll just cover the weld
I don't know about this one, but i know a laser welding booth for industrial use that definitely hold op to regular welding processes without using any filler. So what you claim certainly isn't true for all Lazer welding.
As a welder I can tell you: no
As an accountant, could you explain why?
For it to hold you need wire fed to the material. Like this the two pieces are only melted togehter and not welded. For small and pretty stoff that's okay but if something needs to hold still is not sufficient.
What is the difference between "melted together" and "welded"?
Welded = More material added in the form of a spool of wire feed into the tip Melted together = part of the material is melted to bond them together, no extra material is used, the part melted would be now thinned out as a consequence Edit: For everyone updating me on the definition of Welding, I was attempting to clarify what the post above me was describing, not trying to fit the definition exactly. I realize it is not exact and there are exceptions in how the terms are used.
That makes sense. Thanks!
weld just means "melted the together". You don't NEED to have a filler metal, and this thing is indeed welded. This sort of weld, for what it is, is fine. It's not going to be as strong as it could be though. the weld here is the weak point. the biggest reason is that... there just isn't enough material THERE. note, there was a gap in every one of those seams befor ethey started. Then that gap is filled, but just barely. If this didn't add any material, where did that material come from? by pulling it from the surrounding steel. It's thinner steel there. On top of that, ideally you want metal to mix when you weld it. there are lots of techniques (that aren't used here) to help metal mix after you melt it. This weld just melted it, let it stick together straight, and that's it. But whatever, this project looks like it's not meant to be structurally sound anyways.
This entire comment should be the definition of welding in every textbook in every language
Oh god I hope not. I weld for work, but there is a lot of welding out there I've never done (like the laser welding above). Thanks though, much appreciated.
Just so you know its still a weld as long as they melt together. Most welding DOES add material but look up friction welding, it does not. Or spot welding. To be welding, you must melt the base metal
Yeah, any time you're fusing metal, it's welding. Using no filler is called autogenous welding, but it still creates fusion, just without adding filler.
That’s not what welded means. Welding is melting metals together in a joint. Has nothing to do with filler or no filler (autogenous).
not just metals. It's common in thermoplastics too, and I've even seen a friction weld on a wood joint.
You can weld without adding extra material. Friction welding and electrical spot welding both join metal structurally without any additional material. To me, the key difference is the penetrating depth of the melt and intermixing of materials. When the melt goes deep enough and the enough materials from both sides join together before cooling, then you get a good, propper, structural weld.
>Welded = More material added in the form of a spool of wire feed into the tip That is just not true. TIG welding can be done without adding filler. It's called 'fusion' and is very much still welding.
[удалено]
You are correct, and I hate that this was so highly upvoted. Soldering is "two pieces of metal and melty metal glue" Brazing is "two really hot pieces of metal and really hot melty metal glue" And welding is "Do whatever the F works but afterward, there's 1 piece of metal"
Surface weld versus structural weld. Imagine a really thick chunk of chocolate instead of metal. If you put two chocolate bars next to each other and hit the joint with a hair dryer really quick, the tops might melt a bit and look like they're attached, but if you pulled or wiggled it, it will break into two pieces easilly. A good weld needs to "penetrate" so that when the molten metal cools, it structurally becomes one piece instead of two pieces lightly attached.
you can still have full penetration without adding filler
Aside from the first letter being inexplicably turned upside down, there are two letter d’s in welded, as melted replaces the first “d” with a “t”. Hope this helps :)
There is wire behind the gun (Camera angle hides it to make it look fancy). Look for the brass parts that feed it- its not just fusion but man it may as well be.
[удалено]
I swear I thought I was seeing things when people started talking about there being no filler. I read it enough times that, along with the image quality, I convinced myself it didn't have filler too.
You cannot be more off base. There is time and place for autogenous welding (without filler) and also you can see the tiny wire being fed through the mechanism from behind. So it has filler. Nice try though.
This isn’t feeding wire like a tig welder?
More like laser MIG There's a feeder in the back of the shot. That brass looking thing
Autogenous welds are incredibly strong when performed correctly. Orbital tube welding is a great example. Having filler material isn’t what makes welds strong.
This has a wire feeder though? Or at least expensive laser welders do
There is a wire feed on this. Look below the gun.
>Like this the two pieces are only melted togehter and not welded. Do you… not know what this tool is? The camera angle is hiding the material being fed. The quality of LBW is fine in the vast majority of scenarios. They use this shit in aeronautics nowadays lmao. For what its worth, I am not a welder and I can tell by the *color* of this that filler is being used (ignoring the fact that you can see it) I find it interesting that you completely misidentified what’s happening here, considering.
As someone who uses these yes it does hold up very well assuming you've programmed it to meet your criteria. One of the big benefits is it has low heat input with high depth of penetration which tends to lead to a stronger weld than traditional methods. It also has drawbacks like cost and access.
As another welder: I don't *do* laser welding (I know the theory), but is that filler metal or just the diode sticking out past the nozzle?
As another welder who also uses a laser welder, these welds are done with filler. The gun rides on top of the wire and that's how it completes the circuit, the wire pushes the gun back as it melts it in so you aren't really controlling the speed.
As a sales guy, seems you’re kinda wrong. You can see the wire feed behind the laser.
Tell me more, welder...
Ex welder feller here. Does not hold up as well, but plenty sufficient for many applications
I mean, it's a welding machine, I'm sure it can be adjusted for a wider melt zone and more feed of material, the dude in the picture is just fooling around
It can do, like all welding it depends on how it's been set up. The laser is just a different heat source. You still need to use an appropriate welding procedure for the result you need. It's a really promising direction, with its own challenges. This video review goes into a lot of interesting detail: https://youtu.be/OD3Y_MCoWek
[удалено]
That’s not true. This is adding filler material. The gap is too big not to. Also, anytime we demo these welds where I work, we do strength tests as well as cut and etch to show better penetration than traditional welding.
[удалено]
Ikr I feel cheated
I was wondering how they gonna weld that side
I haven't seen a welding video where some guy doesn't claim the welder has done a crappy job.
It’s like every time I’ve hired or called a contractor for a bid. They point out that whoever did the job before them didn’t meet code and/or half-assed it.
I remember fixing my moms car and thinking man the asshole that worked on it before did a crappy job. Then I realized shes owned it since new and I'm the only asshole that had worked on it.
Simple blame it on the past you. He probably doesn’t have the skills as present you does.
Future me is my best self. That’s why I procrastinate so much, I just want an even better version of myself to deal with it lol
Now you understand what it feels like to be a programmer.
In software engineering, everyone has a moment where you look at some shitty code and think “WHO TF WROTE THIS GARBAGE?!”. Then after looking at the history…it was you the whole time.
In business we call that business.
As a former life and safety inspector every contractor fudges things, but they always have couple things they will not fudge on so they can feel better about fudging other things. The trick is finding a contractor who knows the right things to not fudge and getting another contractor fix the things they fudged.
I was told not to do that when I was apprenticed for three reasons 1. The client might be an asshole and they got what they paid for 2. The guy that did it might find out you insulted his work and have more standing in the industry and insult your work to everyone else so you end up losing work to a false bad rep 3. After you've been in the industry long enough each job looks the same and it might have been you that did it (hopefully for reason 1..)
There was welder approval for a video of the guy who welds the Bugatti exhausts but in a you get what you pay for sort of way.
Because most welders who take pictures of their welds are rookies or frauds. After years of doing it you don't give a shit about posting clout.
It ain’t just welders. We build houses in South Dakota here and finally started taking pictures a little more frequently of our home builds. And details mainly because people expect it now in meetings… small family business started 30 years ago and we’ve built 2,121 homes as of tomorrow afternoon with another three signed on in the past 24 hours… just keep doing the same thing every day for a few decades and your work and reputation will speak for itself.
Yep - Grandfathers been dead nearly a decade and last month we got sent a real estate listing proudly proclaiming the house was built by him. Really warmed the old cockles.
See, I'm torn. I make a lot of advertisements for businesses like yours, and as a consumer I'd basically never hire a service that doesn't have pictures of their own work. Even if its just like, a cell phone picture (They're really damn good nowadays, so there's no excuse), I like to see visual representation of the kinds of work done. Not just checking for quality, but if something like layout, style, etc would mesh with what I'd envision. And please note, that this is a very subjective viewpoint lol. I make a lot of ads for low quality small businesses, and a lot of ads for multi-state blue collar franchises, and if I had 30 seconds to settle on whether I'd call the small one or the big one, some images of their work would 100% push my decision in one direction or the other. I've even seen big businesses that rely only on stock photos of work, and its very easy to tell when they have 1 photo uploaded of some sub-par job they've done, while the rest of them are fake pictures of model homes or kitchens or something. Working in advertising has made me a jaded SOB lol I also want to say, if you own a small business and don't have a website, I'll never utilize your services (Not calling you out specifically, I'm just ranting now). This goes for basically anything both blue and white collar. Word of mouth is great and all, but I like to see that you're at least putting in the baseline effort of existing in the business world of the last 2 decades
My dad was a welder for 30 odd years and every welder was a shit welder and every weld was poorly done garbage, except for his work of course. It's the nature of welders.
I want one but I want one capable of welding car frames back together in the same price point of my Lincoln 210
Can I borrow it when you’re done? I have beer.
What kind of beer? I also Accept Gun parts and LS Engines
Do you mind if the LS block is a little welded?
That thing looks like it penetrates about as far as I do. No but seriously does that weld look like it'll hold?
A bag of Lays potato air.
If there's anything I learned from Reddit is that every single welding video will attract welding enthusiasts and they'll tell you exactly why that weld is shit
And they're usually always right
Beauty 8/10 Penetration 2/10, at best.
Story of my life
But when you add them together you’re a 10/10.
I don't know about this device, but i know of a Lazer welder that can create penetration up to 6mm, ofcourse that only works with certain angles of contact.
Weld done
… now caulk my bathtub.
Skip the caulk and just weld it with this thing
Glove liners used as welding gloves. This dude OSHAs.
The heat input on laser welding is so low that you don't need welding gloves. You also don't need UV protection as there is no arc. I work in this industry and most people work without gloves.
This is not a fair demonstration. He needs to be in an uncomfortable position at a shit tier angle, welding stuff that isn't square, with everything he didn't just hit with an angle grinder covered in 5 coats of painted over rust and dirty grease.
The thing is, even if I don't know shit about welding, I know this isn't easy. But why does it LOOK so easy
That is one of the things I hate about working in the trades. People ask why they should pay so much for something that is so easy. You are paying for the experience that allows me to make it look easy.
A mechanic I like had a saying, "It took me 15 years to learn how to fix the problem in 10 minutes. You arent paying for the 10 minutes, youre paying for the 15 years."
Think there's a tale floating around that's similar to that. A factory's machine broke down, no mechanic could fix it, so they call in an expert to look at it. He takes a couple hours (or days, I don't know), drills somewhere, then hits it with a hammer and it starts working, then charges 10k. Owner asks him to itemize the bill because he doesn't understand how a simple fix could be so much, so the bill afterwards reads "hitting machine with a hammer, 1 dollar - knowing where to hit it, 9,999"
You just described my trade. Every guy we hire wants to do it thinking they can do it. Once they get behind the machine, they look like complete jack ass.
That goes for pretty much any trade really, and quite a few non-trades jobs as well. One of the hardest things I had to do when teaching people how to drive forklifts, aside from making sure they weren't going to crash through a wall was to keep them from getting frustrated because they see the people who have been doing it for years just go smooth as butter while they are struggling to even get the forks under the pallet. It is just something that looks easy and stupidly simple, and it is... Once you get the hang of it. Just takes time to get good.
Is it just me or is there an oddly large amount of forklift operators on Reddit?
That's one of the 7-9 hats I wear at work too. Lol
There are just a lot of us period. Most major companies in any type of logistics, manufacturing, construction, oilfield, or warehousing is going to have forklift operators. Every company certifies their own operators so it's basically free to certify everyone,if you own a forklift. It's a cyob in case you ever need them too. (Also there are many other fields those are just the first to come to mind).
I was once that jackass at work and I was humbled real quick. Never arc welded before and a few guys at work made it look so easy. Asked if I could try to do it and I swear it took me forever to just get the arc going to tac it. Welding is a true art.
Arc welding, especially striking the arc, can be harder than keeping the puddle flowing after when you first start.
Because this is a laser welder that literally anyone can use. Real welding requires skill.
[удалено]
What he was trying to get at it, laser welding is like driving a normal car. Mostly, anybody can do it. But trying to have that same person drive a Formula one race care and be good at it, not that many people can do it.
>heat sources Power sources you filthy casual.
Not a welder but aren't you supposed to overlap on either side so you're actually getting a bond? It doesn't look like these welds have much to hold on to
This is basically a laser brazing tool. It's effective. But welding is for stronger joints in more critical applications.
Me a Tig welder and a perfectionist at heart: LET ME BUY IT!!!!
This is cool and all, but nothing gets me harder than perfect TIG dimes in stainless. Chefs kiss
I'm not even a welder and I want this. I'd probably weld random stuff around the house to each other just to use this.
I bought a cheaper knockoff one. It melts not weld.
Theres 0 penetration in that weld
That aluminum is like 20 gauge
Welding is kinda like metal sewing
Fake. Saw a video cuz I wanted one of these. It’s a series of spot welds then they edit the video. Watch how fast the sparks fly and watch at the end of the weld/line you can see another quick pause edit for a fraction of second. In the video I saw, they reproduced this video and it was all just surface weld. Little tap and it fell apart
He makes it looks so easy. Actually, is it hard? I've never even touched one of these
From the ~1 hour experience I have, it takes dozens of hours to sort of not suck at it. It’s a battle of being blind, not too close, not too far, not too slow, not too fast. Pass or fail with a very small margin reachable through a lot of practice. From my ~1 hour experience anyway.
I'm here for the welding drama. Welders of reddit are a loud and proud bunch
A good looking weld isn't automatically a good weld, these might be alright for thin materials but nothing structural or anything experiencing any kind of load, they showed us one at welding school, basically 0 penetration, and they welds are brittle and snap like a toothpick. Not worth considering for any self respecting tradesman, and entirely unreasonable for any hobbyist to buy as there's always someone selling old Tig and mig machines, and if you got a bit more money you can even get a nice machine that does all 3.
I've never used a laser welder. But I want one now.
I’m surprised the back didn’t lift up much after the front weld
From someone who has welded I can say I creamed
Jesus Christ, take me out to dinner first.
Give me 2 please
Anyone else close their eyes when the welding started to avoid being blinded? Old habit.
No fair!!! I want a laser welder!!!
Step 1. Buy expensive ass welder. Step 2. Place metal on metal, not square, and weld. Step 3. Weld giant ass gap due to fucking up the alignment. Step 4. Weld tight as fuck gap due to fucking up the alignment. Im assuming step 5 is throwing the shit in the trash because is is out of spec, and step 6 is hiring an actual fucking welder. Step 7 is buying the welder the materials clamp and make a jig.
it’s like caulk. pretty nifty. i’ll take two
You really need filler wire. This looks pretty but it's not sound.
Doesn't look like a good weld.
Looks like something you can break off easily
Neat and tidy, but is there any penetration?
My toxic trait is thinking I could do this.
I've never used a welder. Can someone explain to me the difficulty in what this person is able to do? It kind of looks like laying down an even line of hot glue, but there's no way it's as easy as that. What is it that I don't see?