LaserWay

Laser-based processes hold the promise to be a more flexible alternative to today’s manufacturing processes. However, because they are not yet fast enough to meet the productivity necessary for industrial production, they so far couldn’t replace conventional industrial applications. The project LaserWay aims to transform the manufacturing industry by providing a highly flexible production lines based on extremely high-speed laser technologies, such as laser blanking, laser micro-drilling, and extreme high-speed laser material deposition (EHLA). These technologies are the solution for creating more sustainable manufacturing processes and products. With improved machine designs and software, automotive and aerospace industries will gain economic advantages with shorter cutting times, improved material use and better final products.

Current industrial production has been making a move towards more sustainable and highly digitalized production. Equally important are flexible production methods in light of several crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic and Ukraine war that have disrupted supply chains.

Against this background, the project LaserWay aims to improve the performance of the laser technologies by developing fast production machines through the combination of lightweight machine designs, advanced vibration control techniques and program optimizations tailored for high-speed laser applications. As part of the project, the WaySTRONGER integration concept aims to provide a highly precise distribution of photons at the right place and at the right time with high speeds, while maintaining highly resilient and flexible manufacturing processes. Additionally, improved photonics process control has the goal of maintaining high precision and product quality at extremely high-speed, targeting three laser technologies with unique demands.

This is applied to three technologies:

1. Laser blanking on moving coil as a flexible alternative to press blanking machines for small to medium lot sizes. LaserWay shifts this technology economically and environmentally towards highly resilient and flexible manufacturing, by doubling the cutting speed and acceleration and altogether optimizing the process.
2. Laser micro-drilling has many applications such as the Hybrid Laminar Flow Control (HLFC) or the liquid filtering applications that have so far has a positive effect on pollution reduction. Unfortunately, the process is currently expensive and limited in speed, which serves as a bottleneck for the entire manufacturing line. LaserWay’s productivity increase will open the doors of industry for this laser technology.
3. Extreme High-speed Laser Deposition (EHLA) provides excellent corrosion protection replacing chromium coating associated with environmental and health hazards. Currently this is only partly applied with rotational symmetry due to the impossibility to move the EHLA head in 2D at extremely high-speed (>200m/min). LaserWay will open the doors to 2D EHLA thanks to programming, mechanical and photonics designs adapted to highspeed.

With these applications, LaserWay will overcome three main challenges of the high-speed laser applications. These challenges include the precision of the laser while maintaining high speeds on the machine. Furthermore, it involves control of the process dynamics and the machine when using laser applications which are free from process forces but retain inertial forces. For this, LaserWay will propose machine designs tailored to high speed and high-performance applications. Lastly, it will depart from current laser program technologies which are typically derived from conventional processes without considering the unique requirements of extremely high-speed applications. LaserWay will develop specific toolpath designs tailored for high-speed laser applications. The focus lies in optimizing programs for 2D laser applications and exploiting all available software improvements leveraging machine learning and global optimization techniques.