Laser forming of thin section non ferrous metals with a ND:YAG laser source

Abstract

Laser forming is a relatively novel laser technique which has a practical extension for many industrial applications. The laser forming process has become viable for the shaping of metallic components, as a means of rapid prototyping and of adjusting and aligning of metallic and non-metallic components. The process employs a defocused laser beam to induce thermal stresses without melting in the surface of a workpiece in order to produce an incremental per pass controlled distortion. The results reached in this paper have confirmed the feasibility of using a high speed scanning optics system to apply a mini-scale version of laser forming in up to 0.3mm thick non ferrous materials. The results mainly describe opportunities of two-dimensional laser bending with on-line displacement measured data and the generation of three-dimensional shapes using various scan strategies. The three-dimensional post-forming surfaces were measured off-line by a diode laser range finder used in conjunction with high accuracy XY tables. Metallurgical investigations of the laser formed samples are also presented in this work.Laser forming is a relatively novel laser technique which has a practical extension for many industrial applications. The laser forming process has become viable for the shaping of metallic components, as a means of rapid prototyping and of adjusting and aligning of metallic and non-metallic components. The process employs a defocused laser beam to induce thermal stresses without melting in the surface of a workpiece in order to produce an incremental per pass controlled distortion. The results reached in this paper have confirmed the feasibility of using a high speed scanning optics system to apply a mini-scale version of laser forming in up to 0.3mm thick non ferrous materials. The results mainly describe opportunities of two-dimensional laser bending with on-line displacement measured data and the generation of three-dimensional shapes using various scan strategies. The three-dimensional post-forming surfaces were measured off-line by a diode laser range finder used in conjunction with high accuracy XY...