If you have done some welding projects or seen welders working, you can see that a welding helmet is always needed to protect the welder from the dazzling sparks. However, most modern welders do not use traditional helmets anymore but replace them with convenient auto-darkening welding helmet instead.
So How does auto-darkening welding helmet work? Why are they so effective in welding and some other jobs?
Let’s find out the secret in this article!
Parts of an Auto-Darkening Welding Helmet
Like classical helmets, this modern pattern also uses a filter lens to protect the wearer’s eyes. Yet, the difference is that it is an auto-darkening lens.
What’s more, the welding helmet also provides an LCD screen just like in electronic clocks to support you utilize it. You can see the parameters and adjust them there at ease.
As an electronic device, each auto-darkening helmet has filter cartridges that need a power source to operate. To take advantage of the light coming from the sparks and other sources, the producers often integrate solar power into the batteries.
On top of that, a wide range of photosensors around the lens would continuously detect the welding arc to darken the screen automatically, too.
Even when deactivated, the helmet still provides a bit shade. As a result, you can see the details of your workpiece and anything else clearly without having to remove the helmet.
That’s the basic operation principle of an auto-darkening welding helmet. Here we go deeper into the three main parts of its lens.
You must always be concerned about safety during welding. Beyond the potential for burn damage, your main concern should be wearing an appropriate welding helmet to shield your eyes from the strength of arcs.
As you work, you must lift and close your normal helmet, which can get tiring and cause issues if you fail to lower it when you should. An alternative to think about is a welding helmet that automatically darkens.
Perhaps you’ve seen them but were curious about how auto-darkening welding helmets function. You could dismiss them as a novelty or fad if you don’t understand how they operate, but after learning more about them, you’ll realize how useful they can be.
1. The UV/IR (Ultraviolet/Infrared) Interference Filter:
The UV/IR interference filter is located on the lens’s outside. By filtering off UV and IR wavelengths, it aids in limiting what enters the lens. It consistently works. The lens’s auto-adjusting won’t have an effect on how it works.
The filter itself has several layers. It has layers of glass substrate, aluminum oxide, and silver. The multiple layers act as additional filters to block the light and keep heat from penetrating the remainder of the lens, while the metal layers will reflect the damaging light away. The other layers might be harmed by excessive heat and become less effective.
Including a number of metallic layers as well as a slim glass panel, this filter can dramatically reduce the radiation from UV/IR rays in addition to the ADL (auto-darkening lens).
Within the ADL shade range, the metallic layers of the filter manage to absorb nearly 100% of the infrared and ultraviolet rays. In this way, they can protect both the user’s eyes from dangerous radiation and the screen from the heat of the arc.
Meanwhile, the glass substrate will alleviate the harmful UVB ray, and the polarising filters combined with the UV/IR filter will block UVA radiation.
2. Polarising filters:
The layers of the lens include many instances of the polarization filter. Light is made darker by these filters. The amount of light that these filters attenuate varies with their movement. To provide you with the necessary protection, you will shift these filters when you operate the helmet.
Thanks to this equipment, the brightness of visible light will decrease remarkably. In general, moving these polarizers to different positions will have different impacts on the light level.
For instance, you can achieve the darkest vision by placing two polarizers perpendicularly. On the contrary, the 180-degree angle will give you less shade.
3. Liquid Crystal Cells (LCC):
LC, or liquid crystal, cells aid in light deflection. The location of the LC-cell layers will determine how much light they reflect, just as the polarization filter. Your welding helmet contains an electrical component since electrifying this layer will allow for further customization of how it can move and modify light entering the lens. For the LC-cell layers to activate, you need that power or charge.
The LCC works like a mirror to twist the light. A flat LCC can bend the light ray by the square angle. Nonetheless, you can customize it by the amperage volume when the helmet is active.
Break Down Of The Auto-Darkening Welding Lens
An auto-darkening welding helmet’s welding lens is made up of a few separate parts. To completely shield you from the arc’s infrared/ultraviolet radiation, each component is required. There are three parts to auto-darkening welding glasses.
- Polarization filter
- UV/IR interference filter
- LC-cell
How Fast Do Auto-Darkening Welding Helmet Lenses Work?
Auto-darkening welding helmet lenses are only useful if they can operate quickly enough to do so prior to exposure. How quickly do auto-darkening welding helmets work?
The good news is that, in a manual flip-down scenario, auto-darkener technology is far faster than your hands. However, the lens reaction time or the interval between arc sensing and activation might vary significantly depending on the welding helmet you use. However, broadly speaking in terms of thousandths of a second.
According to product labeling, the majority of auto-darkening technology operates between 1/25,000 and 1/10,000 of a second. That is considerably slower than one millisecond. For comparison, it takes a camera to flash for around one nanosecond.
The pace at which the shade changes also varies, but if the reaction times are less than 200 microseconds, the shift will occur so quickly that your eye won’t be able to distinguish between one reaction time and another.
How Does Auto-Darkening Welding Helmet Work?
After you have learned how each part works, we will explain the way they work together.
Once the lens is off, the LCCs between the polarizers will bend the light by a ninety-degree angle to darken your sight. Therefore, regardless of the state of the lens, your eyes are always safe no matter how bright the light is.
Vice versa, if turned on, the LCC between the two polarization filters will not twist the light. Unless the helmet works, you had better stop welding.
Right after the moment that you strike the welding arc, the light sensors will enable the LC panel to darken the lens as you set beforehand. Later, when you have finished your project, the lens will become clear so that you can observe everything easily.
Final Words
We can even go further into more details of an auto-darkening welding helmet. Nonetheless, basic information about the major parts and how they work individually and together are enough for you to understand the device’s operation.
Surely now you have a sufficient answer for the question “How does auto-darkening welding helmet work?”.
Thanks for reading!