Naval Research Lab HY80 laser welding study

Early-1980s NRL finding that laser welding HY-80 vaporized inclusions and gave better toughness — used to argue that ultra-clean steel resists hydrogen cracking, but isn't producible at tonnage scale.

The Naval Research Lab found in the early 1980s that they could weld HY-80 with lasers and have better toughness and more resistance to hydrogen in the weld pool, because the laser actually vaporized away the inclusions in the steel. They ended up with a super-clean steel from the welding process. A scientific curiosity that proves the point: if you're ultra clean, you can resist this — but you can't make steel that clean on a tonnage basis. Maybe a hundred years from now we'll have some way to do it. Today we make steel thirty times cleaner than it was 50 years ago. That's why we don't have laminations, why we don't get crap when you put it in a stress-relief furnace.