Examination of metal side heating of LAMP joint by CO2 laser beam

Nowadays the vehicle industry is focusing on making materials and technologies for automotive parts that satisfy the newest requirements. Reduction of the manufactured vehicle’s weight is such a requirement. There exist many solutions to satisfy this requirement. One of them is when hybrid materials is combined and fixed together. In this research some aspects of the hybrid joining process of steel and PMMA sheet were investigated. Due to the non-transparent type joining CO2 laser were applied from the metal parts and the laser power and the speed of spot movement were changed in order to roughly determine the process window. In case of adhesive based joining the surface conditions have high importance on the bond strength, therefore the effect of cleaning and blasting of the metal surface was also examined. To determine the role of the value of clamping force it was also changed in some cases. Tensile tests were carried out and the tearing force and the bonded area were measured. In this way the joint strength was determined in case of different setting. New bubble formation was also detected during the process