After a period of research and development lasertechnique now is regarded as an important instrument for flexible, economic and fully automatic manufacturing. Especially cutting of flat metal sheets with high power C0₂-lasers and CNC controlled two or three axes handling systems is a wide spread. application. Three dimensional laser cutting, laser-welding and -heat treatment are just at the be ginning of industrial use in production lines. The main. advantages of laser technology. are - high. accuracy - high, processing velocity - law thermal distortion. - no tool abrasion. The market for laser material processing systems had 1985 a volume of 300 Mio S with growth rates between, 20 % and 30 %. The topic of this lecture are hiTrh. power CO₂-lasers. Besides this systems two others are used as machining tools, Nd-YAG- and Eximer lasers. All applications of high. power CO₂-lasers to industrial material processing show that high processing velocity and quality are only guaranteed in case of a stable intensity. profile on the workpiece. This is only achieved by laser systems without any power and mode fluctuations and by handling systems of high accuracy. Two applications in the automotive industry are described, below as examples for laser cutting and laser welding of special cylindrical motor parts.

Date Published: 21 October 1986
PDF: 4 pages
Proc. SPIE 0650, High Power Lasers and Their Industrial Applications, (21 October 1986); doi: 10.1117/12.938111

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 0650:
High Power Lasers and Their Industrial Applications
Dieter Schuoecker, Editor(s)