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In the past, and to some extent still today, resistance spot welding is used in car body construction to join metal sheets. If, for example, a vehicle roof has to be joined to a side panel, the welding robots place many welding points next to each other in this process. Jokingly, this is sometimes referred to as "stapling". Basically, this process is still a suitable joining method, but restrictions with regard to car body design as well as the general technical development partly required alternative solutions.

Nowadays, laser welding has long been a standard process, which is used, for example, in automobile production, steel construction as well as in the aerospace industry. The principle of laser welding is "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation" and means that light is generated with only one wavelength. The high energy density of 10⁵ up to 10⁶ Watts per square centimetre generated in this way is exploited technically in welding: the high energy density of a laser beam is applied to a small spot, creating the possibility of contactless welding at high process speed.

Developing and producing companies of joining technology are just as excited about the trends in their industry for 2023 as distributors and users themselves. Exhibiting companies as well as visitors are eagerly awaiting the start of the international trade fair for joining, cutting and coating technology SCHWEISSEN & SCHNEIDEN 2023 – which returns to its old location in Essen this year. A lot has happened since the last exhibition in 2017. Prof. Dr. Emil Schubert – the WELDPROF^® – presents the changes or reinforcements that will take place next year from his point of view.

The quality of a weld seam depends on many factors, above all good tools. Welding torches from quality manufacturers are nowadays already technically very highly developed. With new developments, it is often just the little things that make a torch even better. A high-speed camera used in the ARCLab research and development laboratory at ABICOR BINZEL provides important insights for optimisation approaches.

A torch neck and its wear parts are exposed to very high thermal loads during welding. The warmer a welding torch gets, the worse it is for its service life. If, on the other hand, a welding torch remains cool during welding, its wear parts are longer usable. During torch development, great importance is therefore attached to keeping the front end of a welding torch as cool as possible. In the ABICOR BINZEL research and development laboratory ARCLab, among the approx. 100 measuring, testing and analysis systems for torches and wear parts, there is a test rig on which the heating of a torch during the welding process can be made visible.

As an in-house research and development laboratory at ABICOR BINZEL, the ARCLab is a facility that many welding technology companies would certainly like to have. Measurements, analyzes and tests are carried out on around 100 test systems in an area of approx. 1200 m² here at the Buseck site. One of these test systems is the double test rig.