The optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a measuring technology which is well-established in medical engineering since the early 1990s. More recently, the technology found its way into laser materials processing where it is used for seam tracking and inspection and also for monitoring and control of deep-penetration laser welding. In this work, deep-penetration laser welding of aluminum and steel using an OCT-system for in-process monitoring of the weld depth was investigated. It is shown that statistical data processing is mandatory to extract the actual keyhole depth. Therefore, two different measures, percentile filtering and considering the frequency distribution of the OCT-data, were considered. Thereby, it is demonstrated that the frequency distribution of the OCT-data has a specific pattern with a local maximum which correlates with the keyhole depth. Moreover, this feature is more significant for welding aluminum and therefore enables one to detect the weld depth more independently and accurately compared to currently applied measures.

This work shows the potential of two-beam laser brazing for joining both Zn-coated steel and 22MnB5. Brazing of Zn-coated steel sheets using Cu-Si filler wire is already state of the art in car manufacturing. New press-hardened steels like 22MnB5 are more and more used in automotive industry, offering high potential to save costs and improve structural properties (reduced weight / higher stiffness). However, for joining of these ultra-high strength steels investigations are mandatory. In this paper, a novel approach using a two-beam laser brazing process and Cu-base filler material is presented. The use of Cu-base filler material leads to a reduced heat input, compared to currently applied welding processes, which may result in benefits concerning distortion, post processing and tensile strength of the joint. Reliable processing at desired high speeds is attained by means of laser-preheating. High feed rates prevent significant diffusion of copper into the base material.

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