In this contribution the use of CO2 high power lasers in the modern car body fabrication is discussed. It is shown that the laser has developed from an in particular flexible to a reliable tool qualified for mass production. Then special configurations of the tooling system and components for quality assurance are requested. Because of its flexibility the laser beam is an excellent tool for both cutting and welding of car body sheets. A new technology for car body manufacturing where deepdrawn metal sheets are bordered by laser beam cutting and afterwards joined together by laser beam welding with filler wire in a butt-joint arrangement is presented. The handling system used for this operation is a gantry robot with flying optics, so that the beam path length varies during the machining of large parts. The beeam's divergence leads to altering focussing conditions and therefore to nonconstant working qualities. An optical component to avoid this disadvantage is described and first results are discussed.
Laser applications in the automotive industry
Laseranwendungen in der Automobilindustrie
1992
15 Seiten, 14 Bilder, 21 Quellen
Conference paper
English
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