Laser Applications in European Automotive Manufacturing: Historical Review and Recent Trends

It is one of the big challenges for a manufacturing technology: to be approved for serial automotive production. Stringent production cycles as well as high quality, safety and environmental standards and keen price competition make automobile industry to one of the toughest sectors in modern industry. Laser material processing started to receive attention as a manufacturing option and an innovative technique for new automotive product and production solutions 30 years ago. Looking back, automobile industry with its high demands on reliability, productivity, profitability and innovation was and still is one of the big drivers and beneficiaries of the continuous improvements of laser sources, systems and processes. This article shall demonstrate that the special capabilities of laser supported manufacturing technologies very well cope with the persistent trends in auto industry, such as lighter weight to be achieved by new materials, designs and processes, and more frequent model changes with multifaceted variants to be accomplished by flexible production lines. It gives a historical review on milestones and highlights of laser cutting and joining applications in Europe's auto industry by quoting more than 100 industrial examples, in order to pay tribute to pioneer work and to present recent developments and progress in laser manufacturing of automobiles. (Photos)