Dukane Corporation, St. Charles IL introduces a new Laser Welding System that allows clear-to-clear plastic welding without the need of any laser absorbing additives. This system incorporates a recently developed 2 micron laser with a greatly increased absorption by clear polymers and enables a highly controlled melting through the thickness of optically clear parts.
Dukane Corporation, St. Charles IL introduces a new Laser Welding System that allows clear-to-clear plastic welding without the need of any laser absorbing additives. This system incorporates a recently developed 2 micron laser with a greatly increased absorption by clear polymers and enables a highly controlled melting through the thickness of optically clear parts.
New beam delivery system integrates both, programmable multi-axes servo gantry and a scan head, supported by a proprietary LaserLinQ™ software which harmonizes the action of both components moving the beam. This assures highly precise and controllable beam delivery when welding mid-size and large components.
LaserLinQ™ also provides users with the ability to break complex weld patterns into separate geometric segments, modify each segment independently and assign different welding parameters to each segment. CCTV camera integrated within the machine enables a live weld preview on HMI screen and ability to directly monitor and record welding cycles for further analysis. All laser enclosures are Class I CDRH certified and utilize laser-safe glass viewing windows.
The flexible welding system also allows for rapid change-over of a wide variety of highly specialized tooling cassettes. The tools, as a standard, incorporate binary tool ID recognition for automatic weld recipe recall. They are capable to support multi-cavity function, multiple feature detection, vision systems, and independent clamping systems in an effort to compensate for part variations.
Currently a laser welding based assembly process is the most advanced, flexible and precise assembly technic for plastic components. This process is very repeatable and allows to produce assemblies of better quality in a very efficient way and reduce costs associated with the reject rate. Because of these advantages laser plastic welding is broadly adopted by automotive, consumer goods and many other industries. However the adoption of this process by medical device manufacturing to date was very limited, as the process was based on utilizing either carbon black or expensive specially designed laser radiation absorbing agents in order to make laser plastic welding possible. The new method allows to join plastics without any additional absorbing agents, which facilitates a laser welding based assembly process for Medical Device manufacturing, and brings all the advantages associated with it to Medical Device assembly.
Dukane will be showcasing this latest Laser Welding work cell at upcoming MD&M West. Visit booth 2919 to see this live and bring your parts and application for discussion with Dukane technical experts.
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