FEATURED ARTICLE Enables Car EfficiencyLaser Technology BY RALF KIMMEL Laser technology is an important key to letting CO2 emissions
be reduced in passenger cars. A multitude of laser-based innovations in automobile production contributes to achieving this goal. The following article provides an overview.
Coming generations of vehicles will be far lighter than their predecessors. Laser-based manufacturing processes play an important part in this progress. Examples include parts without flanges, the increasing use of aluminum, CFRP and other high- performance plastics, thermoforming and joining plastics to metals. All these innovations help to reduce vehicle weight, in turn extending the cruising range and shaving CO2
emissions.
Lightweight Vehicle Construction Thanks to Lasers When joining sheets with conventional spot welding it is necessary to overlap the edges. By comparison, welding with a laser beam makes possible flangeless designs. Here the individual sheets are first assembled by way of tongue-and- groove joints and then welded by the laser. This offers several advantages: processing time drops when compared with spot welding; the elements thus joined can be of differing materials and thicknesses; the resulting structures have no redundant material and thus save weight. In addition, the prepositioning of the parts one with another reduces the – otherwise enormous – effort for clamping technology, permitting simple and cost- favorable clamping aids.
Where greater loads demand additional stability, reinforcing structures can be attached as needed. The corresponding structures – such as the underbody of a vehicle – can be made up with less tooling. Neither are any special tools required for this purpose, which have to be manufactured in an elaborate process when preparing for production. Instead, all the required steps in processing can be carried out by a standard laser welding robot.
One outstanding example of this process is the “StreetScooter” deployed by the German Post Office. It was engineered by an academic spin-off of the Rhenish-Westphalian Technical University at Aachen, Germany, and is built on an underbody made up without flanges. At present about 40 of these microvans are in trial use, which has been thoroughly successful to date.
Using Lasers Permits Innovative Mixes of Materials CFRP – carbon fiber reinforced plastic – is also being used more frequently in lightweight vehicle engineering, especially in vehicles powered solely by electricity. Laser technology also offers clear advantages when cutting and processing materials like this. In this way the incisions are made without touching the material or exerting any force whatsoever, ensuring that the shape and structure of the material remain unchanged. This eliminates all risk of warping, even in non-reinforced materials. Depending on the production process being used, cutting and processing can take place either before or after the CFRP parts have been shaped. When cutting blanks from carbon fiber materials, TRUMPF offers the laser systems in its TruFiber series; spatially shaped, 3D parts can be cut with the TruDisk beam sources made by TRUMPF. If CFRP – or a glass or carbon
Non-flanged structures, when compared with conventional spot welding, offer many benefits in regard to processing time, material use and the weight.
Carbon fiber reinforced plastics can be cut with the laser either before or after shaping. If desired, the pure carbon fiber mats can be cut prior to or after filling with the binding polymer.
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LIATODAY FOCUS: YEAR END REVIEW NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2016
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