"laser" welding

Archer

Like any tool there are legitimate uses and those that are not so legitimate. Laser welding has been around for a while, and the machines are coming down in price. I have a friend who is a goldsmith who owns one, and it was about $30k (he bought it maybe 2 years ago). He uses it for jewellery repairs and for tacking parts in place in preparation for soldering, and he has said that it allows him to complete jobs much more easily, with better quality, and less time, so for him it was a good investment.

For the watch world, it can be used to restore cases certainly, and personally I do think it should be listed specifically that this kind of work was done. At least I would want to know...

Through the watchmaker grapevine I hear things about places buying up beat up vintage watches, building up the cases using laser welding, and then polishing/lapping the case to like new status. They then artificially age the cases and sell the watches at premium prices as "never polished" and that is one reason why such a description holds absolutely no weight with me.

It's a valuable tool to being back damaged cases, but the downside is it further muddies the waters with regards to what is "all original" or not. It's not the only thing that does this, as a skilled relumer can recreate original lume to a very high standard, so ask yourself if you would want to know if the lume was original or not when you think of this question about laser wedling...

Cheers, Al

Fritz

I've seen quite a lot of laser welding as used in the repair of injection moulding tooling. While the metals can be polished back to a perfectly matching surface there is pretty much always a visible line between the old material and the new. I think it's just discolouration from the heat of the process but it is almost always there. A real artist might be able to minimize it by using a finer bead of weld, we're talking about 0.005" here, but you have to find such a guy first. He'll also need to know the make up of the metal as he must pretty much match it for a seamless weld.

oinkitt

I call B.S. .... Ive had a number of things laser welded.

Fritz

I call them as I see them. Having had dozens of repaired components through my hands I’m yet to see a perfect joint. Perhaps its because we tend to have inches of repair instead of a small point or perhaps its because we’re dealing in very hard metals but I stand by my statement.

but then, I was only involved in it for twenty years.

oinkitt

I suggest you get a more skilled operator to do any future work!!!!

Fritz

Wow, thats a stupid comment. you have no idea of the type of work I was involved in at that time or the tolerances involved.

lets just say it involved the production of tight tolerance hydraulic components and 0.0002” errors were enough to cause trouble.

and yes... that two tenths of a thou. About 1/40 of a human hair.

the guy we used for laser welding was widely regarded as the local artist and had quite the line up for his services.

go ahead and call it b.s. again, I won’t bother replying to it. You’re not worth the effort.

Koen

I have some laser welding done a few weeks ago on a mark II, came out really nice!

Why live with a deep scratch if you don’t have to?

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This is the work of @Tmorehouse51