Chicago, IL - Engineers from Utica Enterprises Inc. (Shelby Township, MI) and Rofin Sinar Inc. (Plymouth, MI) were justifiably proud showing off their new remote laser welding system at Fabtech in November 2005. Although they could not share the details with ILS they told about the grand slam they hit with a major sale of multiple units of the remote welding system to a single international automobile manufacturer.
What makes this sale so significant is that the multi-unit order, several dozen units, is being installed in a number of the automaker’s plants, on three continents, to produce welds on just one part, reinforcement for the dashboard. ILS has not heard of such a large order, from a single customer, for systems to process just one part. We can speculate, with some encouragement from the systems supplier, that there will be follow-up orders to weld similar parts from that same automaker.
The remote laser welding system utilizes Rofin’s Diffusion Cooled Slab Resonator, which can produce CO2 output power to 6 kW. The lower-power version used in the auto application is shown in the photo. The beam, directed by a high speed-scanning mirror (Optical Engineering Inc.), can move from one spot to the next, in a multi-spot welding application, in less than 40 ms from spot to spot.
To learn more about remote welding contact Phillip Anthony at [email protected] or Vancho Naumovski at [email protected]. - DAB