Laser Welding Open Circuit Breakthrough in China's Independent Welding Equipment Industry

Welding is a key link in the manufacture of automotive parts and body, and it is also a very widely used technology. In the process of automobile manufacturing, besides body welding, welding technology is indispensable in the manufacturing of engine, transmission, axle, frame, body and carriage. But for a long time, advanced automobile welding technology and equipment have always been the weakness of China's automobile equipment industry, and equipment also basically depends on imports. Fortunately, this situation is expected to change in the next few years, China's local welding equipment manufacturing enterprises are vigorously pursuing, one by one to achieve breakthroughs.

Rapid growth of independent welding equipment enterprises

On March 23, Zhejiang Wanfeng Technology Development Co., Ltd. successfully acquired Paslin Company, a leading international service provider of welding robot application system. Founded in 1937, the core business of this American company is to provide automation system solutions for global automotive and heavy industry production based on automation system concept, industrial design, construction and production assembly experience.

In the field of domestic automobile equipment manufacturing, Wanfeng Robot Industry is good at automated casting, grinding, cleaning, parts and other fields. Wanfeng Technologies said that through the acquisition, Paslin will produce synergistic effect with Wanfeng Robot in the field of industrial automation, providing customers with automation solutions from blank acquisition to integration of mechanical processing and parts connection. This also means that our local enterprises have added a new force in the field of autonomous automobile welding.

At the beginning of this year, led by Professor Shao Xinyu of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Huagong Laser Engineering Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Huagong Laser), Shenlong Automobile, Shanghai General Motors, Jianghuai Automobile, Wuhan Farley Laiche Welding System Engineering Co., Ltd., Shanghai General Motors, Jiangling Automobile, Great Wall Automobile and more than ten other enterprises jointly completed the research and development team of 'High Quality and High Efficiency Laser Welding in Automobile Manufacturing' The project of cutting key technology and complete equipment won the first prize of national scientific and technological progress. 'The value of this project lies not only in breaking the monopoly of the high-end laser processing equipment market of our automobile by foreign enterprises, but also in driving the technology level of laser processing in our automobile manufacturing to the forefront of the world.' Ma Jingkun, Director of Science and Technology Award Office of China Machinery Industry, introduced that before the achievements of this project came out, the field of automobile welding and cutting in China had always been dominated by foreign capital. With the implementation of this project, domestic automotive enterprises began to use the high-end laser welding, cutting technology and equipment developed and manufactured locally on a large scale. He believes that the application of large-scale laser welding technology will play a very positive role in improving the quality of self-brand automobiles.

It is understood that up to now, as a leading enterprise in the field of laser welding in China, more than 500 complete sets of laser welding technology and equipment have been applied in production lines of Shenlong, Great Wall, Jianghuai, Shanghai General Motors, Jiangling and other enterprises, and nearly 100 kinds of key functional components have been developed and a variety of complete sets of equipment design, manufacture and system integration have been completed. Twenty-four utility model patents and three enterprise standards. According to the feedback from customers, some important technical indexes of long-distance overlap filler wire welding, integration of unequal thickness cutting welding, non-penetrating precision thickness control cutting are even better than those of foreign counterparts.

Wide application space of laser welding technology

The automobile manufacturing industry provides a broad market for the application of laser welding and cutting technology. Not only in the field of body welding, laser welding and cutting technology is also widely used in the production and manufacture of automotive parts. According to statistics, 70% of automobile parts can be welded by laser. The application of laser welding in automobiles can be divided into two categories: one is tailor-welded tailor-made tailor-made blanks; the other is welding of various assemblies and frame structures of automobiles. Laser cutting can be used in the manufacture of thin parts in automobiles, such as laser trimming, preparation of slabs, processing of various holes, etc.

In the automotive industry, laser technology is mainly used for body tailoring and parts welding, such as roof and side welding. The precise welding production mode represented by laser welding promotes the progress of automobile welding technology with a new technical concept. In addition, some new connection methods have also taken the lead in the application of automobile manufacturing. Variable polarity MIG/MAG welding method, laser-arc hybrid welding method, magnetic pulse welding method, bonding and mechanical connection method have been successfully applied in the manufacture of various new models.