Welding Girls show

In the late seventies at Imperial College in London a group lead by William
Steen performed the first attempts in combining a laser and an arc (TIG) welding process.
This new hybrid laser-arc welding immediately showed improved characteristics compared to
both the solo laser and the solo arc welding techniques as well as providing increased process
stability, a significantly higher welding speed and a deeper and narrower weld. However, this
innovation did not immediately find practical applications as the laser process itself was not
viable on an industrial scale