Electronics - Battery Welding
Battery assembly requires some very high technology in both chemistry and packaging to create a safe, convenient, and powerful device. Most consumer batteries use crimped metal seals with a polymer sealant for their packaging but when the cell's chemistry changes or more components must be attached to the standard package, the laser is the preferred tool. Batteries are made at a very high rate, sometimes well over 10 per second. Using resistance welders or mechanical fasteners at this rate is not viable.
Pulsed YAG lasers can optically match the speed of the moving cell and add some laser spot welds to the unit without contact, electrode wear, or electrode sticking. Prisms in the laser system can be used to deliver multiple spot welds with a single laser pulse.
For advanced cell chemistries, such as Lithium cells, lasers can deliver even more value. Lithium cells are poisoned by water vapor so a hermetic seal of the cell is critical for long life. Laser welding a lid to the can is fast, reliable, low cost, and easy to automate.
Typical Ni-Cd chemistry will use nickel-plated mild steel components for low cost and good conductivity. Lithium cells often use stainless steel for some of their packaging. All have good metallurgy for laser welding.
For hybrid automobile batteries and high-tech space-based batteries lasers can be used to weld the many thin plates in the battery as well as laser weld or braze some components together inside the cell to optimize the energy per unit volume. Glass to metal feed-through pre-forms can also be laser welded into the battery assembly to provide a hermetic package.
Pulsed YAG lasers produce the necessary pulse energy and discreet pulses for spot welding cell components. Galvo-mirrors or translating optics can be used to match the speed of the cells if a weld-on-the-fly application is needed. For seam welding of cells for a hermetic seal then the CW and Super Modulated CW lasers are often the best choice due to their high speed welding capability with low heat input.
Typical lasers that have been used for this application
JK125P, JK300P & JK300HP
For Fiber-Delivered Cutting, Welding, Heat Treating
JK401SM & JK501SM
Lamp-Pumped Nd:YAG, 400 & 500W, 800 & 1000 with SuperModulation
Please call us to discuss lasers for your specific application
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