Laser: a tool for light weight steel solutions for the automotive industry

Mid 80 th the steel industry discovered the laser as a tool to develop new products made from steel -- the tailored blanks. That means welding single blanks together, which are of different gauge or grades and coating. In the meantime this product is one of the key solutions for light weight vehicles with increasing performances. The market development world wide confirms this statement. But the development of this product is still going on. New high power lasers and new laser generations as Nd:YAG lasers are the basis. Today welded blanks with almost any seam/blank configuration are in high volume production. These blanks offer an additional potential for the optimization of the final product. To produce flat blank is only one possibility. New developments are the tailored tubes as a prematerial for the hydroforming process. This product becomes more and more important for optimized body in white solutions. But this design elements need new solutions in the assembly shops. So the laser is going to get more importance in the 3D welding process as well. This was shown for example in the ULSAB(-AVC)-project. Future vehicles more and more contain different materials. For example the joining of steel and aluminum to Hybrid Blanks can be done successfully by the use of laser. So the laser is one of the most important tools in the future.