Laser Material Processing in Industrial Production
Diode lasers represent an economical, compact heat source that can be adapted to many laser material processing applications by means of suitable additional components or special optics.
Diode lasers represent an economical, compact heat source that can be adapted to many laser material processing applications by means of suitable additional components or special optics.
The flexibility of diode lasers offers a wide range of possible applications for manufacturers worldwide. Diode lasers have become indispensable in many industrial sectors: welding of steel and aluminum, cladding, coating and repair welding as well as brazing and hardening are among the main areas of application. Diode lasers are also the perfect tool for new manufacturing processes such as the welding of fiber composites or 3D printing.
Joints produced with Laserline lasers are particularly strong and display only minimum deformation. Welds produced at high machining speeds achieve an excellent weld surface. A distinction is made between heat conduction welding and keyhole welding. In keyhole welding, diode lasers have already been achieving a beam quality comparable to the Nd:YAG laser for many years. Deep penetration welding is widely used in the energy sector, for instance for gear components. Diode lasers achieve particularly smooth seams with low spatter. Another important application is the welding of aluminum: due to the short wavelengths, verging on the absorption maximum for aluminum, this method is widely used in the automotive industry where high power diode laser systems are used as a tool for welding aluminum for car body construction.
A relatively recent application comes in the form of the welding of tailored blanks using high-power diode lasers. In this process, components made from different materials or different thicknesses are joined for subsequent forming, meaning that vehicle components can be optimized in terms of their crash behavior and weight.
Components hardened with diode lasers reliably meet all the requirements in terms of improved wear protection, which is crucial for many machine parts, tools and implements. As the hardening temperature can be precisely controlled throughout the process, it is possible to achieve an optimum hardness for each material. Laser heat treatment is also used to prepare high-strength materials for subsequent forming by reducing their hardness in well-defined areas.
Brazing and welding with filler wire are well-established methods for joining metal components. As diode lasers are virtually maintenance-free, they are particularly suited to applications such as the brazing of car body components in industrial mass production. Minimum space requirements, portability, high efficiency, and excellent process stability make diode lasers the most efficient tool for these kinds of applications.
Over the last few years, fiber-coupled diode lasers have revealed themselves to be ideal for most welding and coating tasks. Diode laser cladding offers a advantages over conventional techniques, namely higher cooling rates, reduced deformation and a particularly fine-grain structure with optimized adhesion. The resulting finishes are of excellent quality and require virtually no reworking. Laser cladding using powder or wire is a highly efficient option for repairing damaged coatings and applying corrosion and wear protection layers to metal components.
The integration of laser sources into machine tools is a highly interesting use in this field, with huge potential. By combining additive and subtractive tools in a single unit, manufacturers can explore completely new machining processes. A recent example is the five-axis milling machine with an integrated laser. The diode laser applies a powder coating onto the workpiece, providing a solid base for subsequent milling in selected areas. By switching flexibly between the laser and the mill, the workpiece can be reworked to a level of perfection that is simply not achievable by machining the finished part.
Diode lasers have also been used successfully in the following ongoing industrial operations in terms of methods to process composite materials and applications in the plastic industry for many years now:
We take advantage of the opportunity to align the laser’s focus with each power so that the optimum process with the diode laser in laser metal processing is achieved for each application. Additionally, for various processing tasks, the laser is made more specific by virtue of suitable additional components such as a fiber optic cable, an optic, and more. As a result, our diode lasers can be used in various ways within the spectrum of laser material processing. Continuous improvements to the beam sources in the fields of performance and beam quality mean that new fields of application keep opening up for our high-power diode lasers. This high flexibility that characterizes our lasers is also reflected in our modular design principle. The continuous development of our systems is supported by our growing expertise in laser material processing and diode laser technology. Thanks to this knowledge, we can find the right laser for almost every application.
