Nowadays, about 50 million tailored blanks per year are used for the production of car body parts. Advantages such as material saving weight saving and load specific design are evident. By now, all tailored blanks in production are made of steel, even though the substitution of steel by aluminum seems to be a very promising solution for further reduction of car body weight. This paper shows two different processes for laser welding of aluminum tailored blanks: CO2-laser welding with filler wire and Nd:YAG-laser welding with filler powder. Furthermore, the weld quality and the mechanical properties are presented, which show basic differences between hardenable and natural hard alloys. Finally, feasibility studies on car door inner panels show good results concerning the forming behavior and the strength properties of the formed parts. Aluminum tailored blanks offer a high potential for light weight construction and the advantages of tailored blanks can be even higher without a restriction to linear weld lines. Non-linear welded aluminum tailored blanks can be produced with high quality and good formability. But, to introduce aluminum tailored blanks into series production, the process stability has to be insured to guarantee the productivity and therefore decrease the costs to an absolute minimum. For a high productivity of the laser welding process, the following conditions have to be complied with: beam power >= 6 kW at the workpiece; constant focus position over the whole weld length (-> beam path compensation); tolerance of the laser gantry in height <= 0.1 mm or distance control system; tolerance of the laser gantry and positioning of the workpieces lateral <= 0.1 mm or seam tracking system; clamping that prevents distortion of the workpieces in the joint area; clean and undamaged joint edges; constant filler wire position and gap controlled wire feed rate. Therefore, future work of the ERLAS in the fields of (aluminum) tailored blanking will be the further development of process control devices which ensure constant welding conditions. Another point of interest will be the further development of tailored blanking with filler powder. A 3 kW-Nd:YAG-laser and an improved powder nozzle design will be used for welding trials with the aim of a reduction of the weld porosity, an increase of the exploitation of the filler powder and the determination of the resulting process tolerances.


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    Title :

    Laser welded aluminium tailored blanks - recent results from applied research


    Additional title:

    Lasergeschweißte, endabmessungsgerechte Aluminiumblechzuschnitte - jüngste Ergebnisse aus der angewandten Forschung


    Contributors:
    Pohl, T. (author)


    Publication date :

    2000


    Size :

    10 Seiten, 10 Bilder, 9 Quellen



    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Print


    Language :

    English




    Laser welded aluminium tailored blanks - recent results from applied research

    Pohl,T. / Erlanger Lasertechik,ERLAS,DE | Automotive engineering | 2000



    Aluminium Tailored Blanks

    Hibben, M. | British Library Online Contents | 1996


    Aluminium Tailored Blanks

    Hibben,M. / Steimmel,F. / Fischer,J. et al. | Automotive engineering | 1995


    Aluminium Tailored Blanks

    Maier, C. / German Scientific Laser Society | British Library Conference Proceedings | 2001