S. Bonss, J. Hannweber, M. Seifert, U. Karsunke, B. Brenner, E. Beyer, Fraunhofer IWS, Dresden, Germany
Local heat treatment with high power diode lasers is well understood and several industrial applications suggest this technology being a reasonable complement in the field of surface heat treatment. Mass production with professional fixed parameters are better accepted than single part heat treatment with the need of skilfully adapted process parameters. But the special necessary knowledge for that technology is often a barrier for application. Because of that, single parts like dies and cutting tools for automotive car bodies are often heat treated by specialized job shops. This interrupts the in-house process chain and increases the production time significantly. Lot of costs can be saved, having a full automatically optimized and integrated heat treatment.
Three different machine concepts for the Integrated Heat Treatment give the possibility for different well adapted integration levels. Core of the integrated heat treatment is an off-line programming system with internal heat treatment simulation. This software generates optimized CNC-codes for generating specific heat treatment geometries from given CAD-data. A universal laser module consists of a high power diode laser, a dynamic beam shaping system and temperature sensing systems. The laser module is completed by a sixth axis to adjust the rectangular beam relatively to the feed direction for application in five-axis-machines. Six-axis simultaneous movement is necessary to calculate in advance. The paper gives an overview over existing solutions at german manufacturers.
Summary: Industrial solutions for laser heat treatment of large forming and cutting tools with flexible beam shaping and camera based temperature measuring are presented.
