Metal Laminated Tooling - A Quick and Flexible Tooling Concept

For the fast manufacturing of complex formed tools Fraunhofer IWS works together with partners from the industry on a constant automation solution for cutting, packaging and adding steel sheet cutouts. With the selection of the most suitable connecting technology, also requirements must be considered to quality, surface quality and the production costs. Deep drawing or stamping tools do not require a complete connection of the single metal sheets. Here, a fast and economical connection is the main objective. Due to simple automation, laser beam welding offers itself as joining process. On the other hand, a temperature-steady connection of the sheet metal lamellas is necessary for injection molds, which can resist the injection pressures.Mechanical Engineerin

Recent Developments in Laminated Tooling by Multiple Laser Processing

This research and development project is founded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) within the framework concept "research for the production of tomorrow" and cared by the agency “Production and Production Technologies” (PFT) at the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe.Mechanical Engineerin

Recent developments in metal laminated tooling by multiple laser processing. Rapid prototyping journal

Time reduction and quick geometrical changes of complex components and tools are currently the most important demands in product development. The manufacturing process presented in this paper is based on multiple additive and subtractive technologies such as laser cutting, laser welding, direct laser metal deposition and CNC milling. The process chain is similar to layer-based Rapid Prototyping Techniques. In the first step, the 3D CAD geometry is sliced into layers by a specially developed software. These slices are cut by high speed laser cutting and then joined together. In this way laminated tools or parts are built. To improve surface quality and to increase wear resistance a CNC machining center is used. The system consists of a CNC milling machine, in which a 3 kW Nd:YAG laser, a coaxial powder nozzle and a digitizing system are integrated

A Comparative Study on Cutting Electrodes for Batteries with Lasers

E-mobility is still one of the most discussed topics within the automotive industry. Electric powered vehicles can drive emissionfree and present consequently the future propulsion. Nearly all global players in the automotive industry are making great efforts to develop cost-efficient electric drives, which are suitable for series production. The national governments support this evolution progressively. For example the mobility research programme of the Federal Republic of Germany looks at the production of Li- Ion cells in its entirety. Within this programme the cutting of electrodes for Li-Ion cells by lasers is an issue, too. This paper provides a comparative study on cutting materials relevant for Li-Ion cells with beam sources operating in a cw mode and a pulsed mode respectively