Laser welding of plastics transparent to near-infrared radiation

This paper deals with a development of laser welding of colored plastics. Welding of thermoplastics using near-IR lasers has been seen in wide industrial application. Most of thermoplastics are transparent to near-IR laser. Particular characteristic of near-IR laser radiation has the ability to heat the interface between the transparent part and absorbent one colored with pigments. However, it is difficult to weld a pair of transparent materials by a laser beam, since there is no absorption region within them. In this paper, the influence of near-IR transparent plastics on the yield strength of their weldments has been studied: various colored plastics transparent to diode laser radiation were tested as the welding material. The heat transfer within a welding system was also analyzed and assessed the appropriate absorptivity and transmittance of overlapping colored plastic.