Interreg

The aim of the project was to investigate possibilities for the acceleration of laser-based manufacturing processes. Corresponding production processes can now be found in many different forms and applications, both in industry and in SMEs. Often the existing potential of the integrated laser systems can only be insufficiently exploited, since not the performance of the laser beam source, but other factors limit the process speed. First and foremost, there are limitations due to the type of beam guidance, which must be sufficiently fast and at the same time precise. In addition, material transport and guidance as well as necessary process controls can also stand in the way of increasing productivity.

Within the scope of the project, newly developed test setups were used to overcome existing technological limits for process speed and increased until only physical parameters limit the process. For example, by converting linear component movements into circular movements, it could be shown that some machining processes can be increased by a factor of 10 to 40. At the same time, permanently existing limitations were clearly defined: Applications with a focus on the surface area have a significantly higher increase potential than thermally based processes with a large interaction volume.
In order to make the increase potential shown also usable for SMEs, first implementation approaches for paint stripping, surface cleaning, marking and structuring were designed in cooperation with regional companies. The results were presented both in individual conversations and at a large regional specialist event.

In addition, a first application approach, selective layer removal by laser radiation, was realized in the laboratory. It could be demonstrated that there are good chances for this application to be transferred to regional production environments. In addition to initial production samples, feasible process speeds were investigated and growth rates of a factor of 5 – 10 compared to previous systems were determined.