Experimental Investigation on the Influence of Pressure Wheel Design on Heat Dissipation for a Laser Robotic End of Arm Tooling

The initiative of this paper is focused on improving the heat dissipation from the pressure wheel of a laser welding assembly in order to achieve a longer period of use. The work examines the effects of different geometrical designs on the thermal performance of pressure wheel assembly during a period of cooling time. Three disc designs were manufactured for testing: Design 1 – a plain wheel, Design 2 – a pierced wheel, and Design 3 – a wheel with ventilating vanes. All of the wheels were made of carbon steel. The transient thermal reaction were compared. The experimental results indicate that the ventilated wheel cools down faster with the convection in the ventilated channels, while the solid plain wheel continues to possess higher temperatures. A comparison among the three different designs indicates that the Design 3 has the best cooling performance. The measurements show that with this design the temperature around the wheel edge drops to 337°F after a 50 seconds time period, and the temperature at the wheel center drops to 283°F at the same time. The temperatures for the solid disk (Design 1) are 371°F around the wheel edges and 358°F at the wheel center. The data was also compared to numerical analysis using ANSYS workbench simulation. The present work will help improve the performance and lifetime of pressure wheel in the welding industry by providing experimental and computational results for successive design testing and data validation.