Anyone have experience? The rust cleaning has me very intrigued. I have a little Lincoln 140 that has done me well for what ive done. Floors, trunk, etc I have a ‘30 5 window I’m about to start on. I need frame welds and sheetmetal. I can grab a 220v mig and tig for about the same price as a lazer. Not sure which way to go anyone know of i can hammer out the lazer welds like I can tig? Id love the rust cleaning feature Anyone have an opinion on which way to go? thx, J
I don't know much about Lazer welding or it's applications or even how filler is introduced. I can say the right inverter TIG is a very versatile machine. Hard to go wrong with one if you have the skills for it.
There is a coachbuilder on Instagram austin_paruch who has recently started using one and says he loves it. Says there is way less grinding and planishing compared to TIG. He does use mostly aluminum though so one has to take that into consideration. Said there is quite a learning curve but that's to be expected with a brand new process.
I have used Laser welding for repairing tools or putting some "meat" onto a worn crankshaft journal. The seams can be as small as 1/128" or 0,2mm. Thus there is almost no heat in the piece and so no tension that will distort it. There are many different filler metals available. Works very good on welding cracked crankcases as well.
From the info I have gleened from various small sources there is a direct correlation between financial outlay and quality of results. $$$$$$$$$$$ certainly out of my budget, I think I would be investing in a quality TIG machine before Laser anything.
I’ve played with the xTool laser welding setup... It’s impressive in a “this shouldn’t be this easy” kind of way. Within minutes you’re laying down welds that look like they belong in a brochure. Clean, consistent, almost su****iously pretty. It’s approachable, forgiving, and honestly a blast to mess around with. But it’s a toy. A very good toy… but still a toy. The power just isn’t there. You’re not getting real penetration on steel, not in any meaningful structural sense. It’s surface-level satisfaction. Great for light work, great for learning, but you’re not building anything that’s going to take a beating. What it really does is give you a taste. Just enough to get you hooked. Because once you see how intuitive that process can be, your brain immediately jumps to, “What happens when this thing actually has teeth?” An industrial setup with real power, real penetration, real capability… I would love to try one.
Look up Retro power uncut on You tube. They have a very good video on one they are using for metal cleaning and welding. Looks like it would be good for sheet metal welding but that's about it.
Interesting that your experience was the exact opposite of what the guy who is coach building aluminum bodies on Instagram said about his unit. Maybe its the material difference but he said it took him quite a while to perfect a technique that worked and that one of the things he liked best about the machine is it gave better penetration than his TIG and that he didn't have to back flow his panels like you have to when welding aluminum body panels with TIG. Maybe the machines are better suited for aluminum.
25 years ago, I was a young engineer, fresh out of college. I started with TRW, at a factory that made cargo handling equipment for large aircraft. In the never ending quest to save weight, we were making hollow ball bearings for the roller mats that were in the doorways of these freighter aircraft (747's, 767's, A300, MD-11's, etc). We would stamp two hemispheres out of stainless plate, and then weld the two halves together, before polishing the rough welded ball into a bearing. As any welder knows, you can't weld a small enclosed space shut without the gas inside expanding due to temperature rise and blowing the liquid metal out and leaving you with a pin-hole at the weld termination. To solve this problem, we put the halves in a fixture, inside a vacuum chamber, and then used a laser welder to weld the halves together. Worked great, flawless weld every time. Blew my mind on how easy it was to create hollow ball bearings.
I had to do something similar, did not have a vacuum but heated the whole body and welded the last spot while the rest cooled down. It almost ****ed the metal into the seam.
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