Welding of bipolar plates
More productive welding for hydrogen fuel cells
Scanlab, together with sister companies Blackbird Robotersysteme and Holo/Or, is developing a new system setup that could double productivity in the welding of bipolar plates for hydrogen fuel cells.
Fuel cell technology was long regarded as a niche market. In the meantime, demand has increased noticeably, but for efficient mass production, the throughput for welding metallic bipolar plates, which form the stack of a fuel cell, must be increased. High welding speeds require fast scanning systems and high-power lasers, both of which are available today. However, the welding process itself is decisive for the achievable speed. Defects in weld seams, such as "humping effects" and penetration notches, often occur as soon as a certain speed is exceeded.
Blackbird Robotersysteme has integrated the Intelliscan 2D scan head of the Flexishaper in a test setup. Flexishaper, a beam shaper that can be adjusted across the entire power range, is the latest development from Scanlab and Holo/Or. A process simulation was used to determine the necessary beam shaping. The design of the beam shaper used is the result of a combined optical design that combines diffractive optical elements (DOE) with a scanning system. The application tests allowed the speed limit for flawless welding to be shifted from 45 m/min to up to 70 m/min.
High demands on the process
Welding thin sheets for bipolar plates places similar demands on the machining process as laser powder bed fusion (LPBF). Both processes require a scanner image field of up to 500 x 500 mm² and a typical process speed of around 1 m/s and below. In the metal 3D printing process, the processing speed is not limited by the scanning system or the laser power, but the process itself sets the limits for the throughput. The pleasing laser welding results are therefore the first step on the way to optimizing LPBF processes.
The next steps are to test the concept of laser welding on a larger scale and to pursue various applications in parallel. Scanlabs Fibersys is specifically designed to meet the requirements of both LPBF and welding processes. For this reason, the integration of DOEs precisely into this scanning system, specially designed for use in multi-head machines, has been included in the development roadmap.
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