NASA's Handheld Laser Torch Welds Hard-to-Reach Materials

A smaller laser system being developed at NASA offers a much more ergonomical package for the welder, says Paul Gradl from NASA Marshall Space Center. In the above video, Gradl explains how the handheld laser torch  welds and brazes metals, and repairs hard-to-reach Space Shuttle engine nozzles.

Transcript

00:00:00 [Music] nasa developed a handheld laser welding technology about a decade ago for use on the space shuttle main engine nozzle coolant tubes the original system was a pretty large system that we developed in in conjunction with some industry partners but really the modern technique that we

00:00:20 developed was the handheld laser welding torch with a series of integral safety features on it to make sure that it was safe for the technicians out industry and at nasa here to use so some of the safety features that we have on this are interlocks for the room that we're working in which

00:00:39 will power the laser off if somebody walked in the room the other safety features are of course an operator switch on here that can be turned on and off a what we call a dead man switch that has to be depressed in order for the laser to operate one of the other safety devices on the torch is the use of proximity

00:01:00 detectors these proximity detectors must have the torch within a certain range of the material in order for the laser to be enabled this torch operated off 240 volts so it did take some special power requirements we did have an operator panel on this which allowed us to change our gas flow enable the laser

00:01:26 and also enable our foot pedal the foot pedal and the laser system itself we were trying to replicate a tungsten inert gas or a tig welding torch so that welders were familiar with this technology one thing with the laser over tig torch the tig torch you have a very difficult

00:01:45 time seeing with the laser torch you're only required to wear the laser safety goggles which makes viewing of your welds much easier once we had developed this system we realized the benefits of the handheld laser welding and we tried to improve upon that system significantly

00:02:07 and one reducing the size of the system particularly reducing the size of the torch we included all the same safety features on this system that we did with the previous generation system including the proximity detector the operator switch or the dead man button the enabling switches on the laser

00:02:31 itself and also an interlock for the room that we're working with in one of the advantages with the smaller torch is being able to use off the shelf gas cones that operators will be familiar with from the tig welding process one of the big advantages of this

00:02:50 smaller laser system is the ability to use 110 volt power instead of the 240 volt power one of the other things we'll show is the reduced size of the torches themselves such a much more ergonomical package for the laser operator one of the things that enabled us to reduce the

00:03:14 size of the torque is using a much smaller fiber optic cable and that was from the fiber laser using the fiber laser we used the same foot pedal that we did with the old system that allows the operator to vary the power real time as lazing operations are taking place

00:03:36 some of the applications that we developed this for originally it was for the space shuttle main engine nozzle coolant tubes we have have to put a very precise weld or brace into the coolant tubes they're very thin metal and you can actually damage adjacent tubes if you put too much heat into them

00:04:00 so with the handheld laser welding the operator has control with the foot pedal over how much heat they can put into the part and make sure that they're not damaging any of the other tubes around it that was the original application that we developed almost 10 years ago on this since then we've reduced the size of the

00:04:21 torch and also increased the power of the torch which has allowed us to do welding of some super alloys such as the haynes 230 on j2x nozzle extension these are some examples of some of the welds that we've been able to do with that very small heat affected zone on those welds nasa and industry

00:04:42 partners have completed research and development in advancing of the handheld laser welding system nasa is currently using this on several programs as well as some dod programs there are several other industries where this technology is applicable such as medical aerospace and mold

00:05:01 making industry nasa is very excited about this emerging game-changing technology and looking forward to working with other industry partners on this [Music]