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The applications of lasers for welding polymers in industry are slowly increasing but the main problem to date is that joints can be welded only by the transmission welding technique and this significantly reduces design flexibility. New developments have allowed more reliable and cost-effective fiber lasers with longer wavelengths to be developed that completely remove these design limitations. Non-contact, high precision laser welding processes allow optically clear welds to be produced in polymers that are transmissive to the standard infra-red laser wavelengths. This technique, which relies on absorption of the laser beam through the full thickness of the materials to be welded, has many benefits over existing techniques.
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