S45C steel has been widely used in industrial applications, such as crank shafts, gears, main spindles of machine tools, connecting rods, etc., because of its distinguished mechanical property. In the convention arc welding of S45C plates without heat treatments, it is possible for welding defects to take place, such as a void or a hot-crack, due to a high carbon composition of S45C. Laser welding process is widely used in the industrial field due to its numerous advantages: a small heat affected zone(HAZ), deep penetration, high welding speed, single-pass thick section capability, and small distortion after welding. The objective of this research works is to investigate the influence of the process parameters, such as power of laser and welding speed, on the characteristics of laser welding for the case of nickel coated and nickel uncoated S45C steel. As the result of the experiment, in case of butt welding, nickel coated S45C steel has a uniform formation of welding zone and it was judged that the welding nature was better as inner defects and the quantity of spatter were formed relatively fewer than nickel uncoated S45C steel.