ERLASER^® WELD SCAN

Laser welding at maximum productivity!

ERLASER^® WELD SCAN has been designed for welding of small and medium sized assemblies with both maximum output and high accuracy in particular. A unique, patented machine construction with a laser scanner integrated in highly dynamic movement axes revolutionizes the applicability of laser welding for complex and complicated welding tasks. The cell is prepared for the usage of work piece carriers. Thus the cycle times can be reduced almost to the pure welding time.

Special features of the system technology are

• a novel machine concept for high speed remote welding with 3D scanner technology (XY: 190 x 320 mm², Z: +/- 70 mm)
• applicability of fiber guided lasers with high beam quality (beam parameter product BPP smaller or equal 8 mm mrad)
• hybrid 7 axes kinematics with rotary and tilting axes for work-piece orientation and complete processing in one clamping
• reduced secondary processing time by exchange system for work piece carriers using double gripper technology
• extensions for manual or automated loading

The driving forces for ERLAS to develop this new type of a laser welding cell were the limitations of robotics by means of speed and accuracy. Due to temperature sensitivity of a robot´s arm and construction related path errors butt joints were avoided, although the strength of this joint type is the highest. ERLASER^® WELD SCAN sorts out these problems. The 3D laser scanner can move to the starting point of a weld seam with 70 meters per minute. The hybrid kinematics with seven axes show a clearly better guiding behavior with repeat accuracies below 0.05 millimeter.

The more weld seams an application needs the better the economic viability will be. Optimum productivity can be performed by use of two ERLASER^® WELD SCAN systems integrated in one production cell and connected to automated feeding of work piece carriers by ERLASER^® AUTOMATION. An existing application with 22 weld seams is produced with a cycle time of 9.5 seconds, whereas a robot based solution would take more than 2 minutes.

Assemblies producable with ERLASER^® WELD SCAN are for instance column jackets, gear shift controllers, gear shift forks, pump wheels, clutch parts, exhaust valve parts or locking sleeves.