CASTELLINI OFFICINE MECCANICHE

High thickness welding process

In the naval applications, as well as for infrastructure and construction sectors, welding of thick plates (>15 mm) has become of crucial importance. Nowadays, the common techniques involve several passes of traditional Gas-Metal Arc Welding (GMAW) to fill a gap with a precise geometry. These techniques are, inevitably, time consuming due to the necessity of multiple passes, material consuming because of the volume of the gap which needs to be filled and complicated due to the precise preparation of the joints.

To overcome these drawbacks, Castellini propose a Hybrid Laser-Arc Welding (HLAW) technique in a configuration which allowed us to achieve a sound weld of two plates, 20 mm thick, of naval steel EH40 in a single pass and with considerable speed.

The most important result of this research is that the welds have been performed in a simple butt configuration, with straight edges of the plates and without any chamfer or additional preparation. Moreover, the developed process is scalable guaranteeing the stability and the solidity of the process even on long welding paths. This confirms the easy implementation on an industrial processing unit for massive production.

This result opens the way to a faster, more reliable, and less costly process for the welding of thick and long plates. Furthermore, since the constant increase of the achievable laser power, there is the reasonable hope to push the single-pass maximum weldable thickness even further.

Based on the above technological developments of the laser application, Castellini supply high thickness laser welding lines operating in long welding path.