Seam Tracking Monitoring Based on Keyhole Features during High-Power Fiber Laser Welding

Seam tracking is an important field to obtain good welding quality. During the high-power fiber laser welding, the laser beam focus must be controlled to track the welding seam accurately. A method of detecting the offset between the laser beam focus and the welding seam based on analyzing the keyhole features was researched during high-power fiber laser butt-joint welding of Type 304 austenitic stainless steel plates at a continuous wave fiber laser power of 10 kW. The joint gap width was less than 0.1mm. An infrared sensitive high speed camera was used to capture the thermal images of a molten pool in welding process. Two parameters called the keyhole centroid and keyhole shape were defined as the eigenvalues of seam tracking offset to determine the offset between the laser beam focus and the desired welding seam. The welding experiments confirmed that the offset between the laser beam focus and the welding seam could be monitored and estimated by the keyhole centroid and keyhole shape parameters effectively.