Posted this on another forum and thought some of you with lasers
may find this helpful.
After getting many headaches when trying to successfully laser weld
silver, I stumbled onto this totally by accident. I was laser welding
a silver pendant that I had cast several months back and learned that
the pendant was welding much smoother than the wire I was welding
with. After some trial and error, here is what I discovered:
I can now successfully weld silver without marking the weld area
with a sharpie.
The weld is stronger than one made with silver solder wire. The color
matches well.
If anyone is interested, here’s the formula.
WiRe:
29 or 30 gauge wire alloyed with 50% standard sterling silver and
50% .925 deoxidizing silver grain. (I’m not sure if all the deox
silver is the same, but I used the “Sterling D” from United PMR. I
believe it has either silicon or aluminum in it as the deoxidizing
agent. I also found that a 50/50 alloy of standard sterling silver
and “Sterling D” will allow the wire to be drawn much better than
100% deox silver. It seems to be more brittle).
Laser Settings:
320 volts, 12.0ms, 18 focus, 0.0hz (adjust the voltage and focus
accordingly to the job at hand) Pulse shape (This shape has a
pre-pulse and then ramps slightly up and then down at the end).
point 1. 0 ms 100%
point2. 3.1 ms 100%
point3. 3.1 ms 40%
point4. 4.9 ms 50%
point5. 6.5 ms 50%
point6. 8.3 ms 50%
point7. 10.3 ms 25%
point8. 12.0 ms 0%
*Note. For those without pulse shaping on the laser; a straight
pulse also works pretty well if the voltage is dropped down to around
285-290v, but I like the shine I get with a shaped pulse. Also, I
have no idea why the silver mixture works so much better than
standard sterling wire, but it’s a HUGE difference.
Hope this helps all with lasers.
Best regards,
Ken Sanders