Forming of Brittle Materials—A New and Valuable Application of Diode Lasers

Investigation on laser forming of stainless steel sheets under coupling mechanism

“…However, there are also certain limitations such as low amount of deformation compared to conventional process in a single exposure or scan pass which adversely affect the productivity. Therefore, often localized heating by laser beam is coupled with conventional forming processes like Schuöcker et al [2] used diode laser bars in bending press to achieve the temperature necessary to bend brittle sheet metals within seconds. Recently, Lambiase et al [3] have shown that passive water cooling can drastically reduce cooling time between successive scans in multi-pass laser forming without affecting the final bending angle and thus, productivity can be improved.…”