Welding electrical connections between battery sheet metal materials and additively manufactured (AM) aluminum components: The effect of surface roughness

Abstract

The integration of additive manufacturing’s design versatility with the push for electrification can lead to unique innovations. In this context, when discussing welded joints, their quality and reliability play a significant role. Restricting factor for use of laser powder bed fusion of metal (PBF-LB/M) additive manufactured (AM) parts is often parts surface quality in as-built state. In addition, the surface quality changes when the part plane orientation changes. In this study AlSi10Mg aluminum test samples were additive manufactured in seven different build angles. The AM samples were glass bead blasted after manufacturing and the surface roughness of the joint surface area was optically measured. After the measurement, the AM samples were welded to nickel-plated copper and aluminum sheet metal. A continuous wave single-mode fiber laser with scanner optics was used to carry out the welding experiments in lap joint configuration. The structural and mechanical properties of the welds was evaluated by macroscopic images of the weld cross-sections and tensile testing of samples. The electric resistivity of samples was also tested. Based on the measurement results of the samples, the impact of surface quality was discussed. The results indicated that there was no clear effect of building angle to the final weld quality. The worst surface quality in joint area was on the test pieces which joint surface was facing down towards build plate.