I am looking forward to the replies.

I did a real cursory research a while back and I came away with the feeling it was way too much of a learning curve (personally).

It would be different if I had someone around already familiar with its use or at least possessed normal cognitive skills and patience.

 

Show the welding lasers

 

They do a good job of hiding the cold wire feed system when they show short video clips. You don't just grab and go, It takes as much time to dial in as a Mig machine although it's more like cold wire Tig. With the lasers becoming more available and affordable they are showing up at LWS open houses especially if they have an automation department. The LWS's with an automation department or lab are more likely to have one on hand as they demo robots, cobots, laser and plasma automation. As it is they are still out of reach for most people. I'd rather invest in a high end twin pulse machine like Fronius, Lorch or OTC. I like the rust and paint stripping lasers too.

 

I have attached this picture before, but this is our solution to this. We butchered the dual wire feeder and built a cart with a swing arm. This allows us to use almost the full length of the 10 meter fiber without having to drag around the wire feeder.
We have been quite pleased with our welder so far. We haven't done any carbon steel yet but a little bit of stainless and a large amount of aluminum. We did a large aluminum tube shelf job with mitered corners and cross tubes, almost 10,000 1" square tube joints welded on 4 sides. It worked great for that! Much nicer weld than Mig and fast. It uses Nitrogen for shielding gas, and lots of it. Wire usage is minimal. It is a lay-wire technique, so the wire speed determines travel speed.
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I have a very credible source that says Miller is planning to release a handheld laser system. Cover gas is dependent on material to be welded.

 

The only manual laser welding machine I've used was one by IPG Photonics, and like Rondo said a lot of the videos you see online don't show you all the effort that goes into making a weld.

Laser weld cons:
-can't handle bad fitup very well or at all, the AWS recommendation is maximum root opening of 3% of material thickness in materials up to 1/2 inch. That would be a max root opening of about 0.004" when welding 1/8" steel.
-can't easily weld certain materials due to reflectivity
-can be very frustrating to get the shielding gas right due to how turbulent they welds are
-require special PPE and it's not something you can do in an open shop with other people like arc welding. If someone is working or walking through the area where laser welding is happening they have to wear eye protection. All of the manual laser machines are class IV lasers, meaning the reflections from the laser are hazardous in addition to the actual beam.
-laser welds are prone to porosity and cracks in materials that normally don't have weldability problems.
-the laser equipment relies on properly aligned mirrors to get peak welding output, our photonics machine has had to get the mirrors realigned several times just from the gun being dropped from table height. A standard MIG gun isn't nearly as fragile and is pretty easy for most welders to repair on their own.

 

I recently purchased an Umprotech 2000w laser welder with a single wire feeder. I got it because i am getting into a lot of small weld projects such as custom handrails where there are 100s of welds from 1/2 to 2” long in light gauge materials including aluminum. It took me a bit to get set up because of a missing cable when it arrived but I actually only spent about 1/2 a day actually welding before i felt comfortable doing a production run. I have been very pleased with it and did not find the learning curve all that difficult.

Safety is definitely a concern. Safety glasses/shields MUST be wavelength specific. Mine is 1064nm. They are inexpensive and as mentioned above EVERYONE in the vicinity should be wearing them.

I have used mine strictly on aluminum so far using Argon as the shielding gas.

Pic of the panels i have built so far.
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Up close shot of a 1/2” long weld. No cleaning or polishing other than running the tip of my gloved finger over it.
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I recently purchased an Umprotech 2000w laser welder with a single wire feeder. I got it because i am getting into a lot of small weld projects such as custom handrails where there are 100s of welds from 1/2 to 2” long in light gauge materials including aluminum. It took me a bit to get set up because of a missing cable when it arrived but I actually only spent about 1/2 a day actually welding before i felt comfortable doing a production run. I have been very pleased with it and did not find the learning curve all that difficult.

Safety is definitely a concern. Safety glasses/shields MUST be wavelength specific. Mine is 1064nm. They are inexpensive and as mentioned above EVERYONE in the vicinity should be wearing them.

I have used mine strictly on aluminum so far using Argon as the shielding gas.

Pic of the panels i have built so far.
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Up close shot of a 1/2” long weld. No cleaning or polishing other than running the tip of my gloved finger over it.
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That is awesome! What filler are you using if I may ask?

 

Someone asked about my laser welder on another thread.

I have a 2000 watt Umprotech welder with a single wire feeder. It is a Chinese made machine, but considerably more affordable than IPG for example. It has a MaxPhotonics laser source and a Hani water chiller.

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Wire feeder
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Welding gun
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Weld settings interface
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Someone asked about my laser welder on another thread.

I have a 2000 watt Umprotech welder with a single wire feeder. It is a Chinese made machine, but considerably more affordable than IPG for example. It has a MaxPhotonics laser source and a Hani water chiller.

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Wire feeder
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Welding gun
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Weld settings interface
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This is very similar to the one I was messing with at a show. How long have you had it and do you find it a good value? I know that the pricing is getting better every year.

 

So is there a wire feed time delay setting? So you can hot start the puddle and tie it in before wire feeds? I am kind of parrelelling this to mig machine settings.

Or perhaps more amps at start, then slope down for continuous. IDK.

So standoff gap is just centering the wire into the puddle? Is there beam/wire convergence adjustment?

 

It has quite a few advanced settings. You can put a wire feed delay into it. It has a tacking mode where you can just fuse materials together. And actually has a power ramp UP at start. I think this is to acccount for the delay between squeezing the trigger and actually beginning to drag the gun as well as helping to establish a puddle.

There is a focus depth setting which is usually set at or below that actual surface of the material. This puts the most intense focus deeper into your material for penetration.
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Really interested to see how the 5356 works for you.

 

So i got my laser welder set up today with the 5356 3/64 wire. It was a whole lot less trouble than the 4043. In this laser application i am finding that stiffer and larger diameter filler wires in both aluminum and mild steel make the process much smoother. I ain’t a pro at it yet but here is a sample of a bunch of pieces i have to make and weld up next week.

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I'm going to chime in here with a question. The reason I started looking at laser welders is because I got interested in lifepo batteries and was thinking of building one. The battery kits I found included instructions which said you needed to laser weld the studs onto each of the batteries.

On a 48v 105ah battery kit vs built is a savings of $1500.

Not going to pay for a laser welder on 1 battery, but put brain I'm gear, make 20, get better pricing and free laser welder for maybe 20 hours of work.

 

If it sounds to good to be true…

First i ever heard of that type of battery… can’t answer as to why it would require a laser weld