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ヨ ー ロ ッパ 自 動 車 産 業 に お け る レ ー ザ 加 工 の 実 用 化
The Latest Laser Applied Technology
Industry in Europe on the Example
White Applications of the Volkswagen
Keywords LASER welding, Autoniohile,
Laser brazint
1.lntroduction
The use of laser based welding technology on-line in the
body shop at European automotive manufactures, have a
long history starting in the mid 80's. Single laser installa-
tions, mainly to join the roof with the side frame and the
trunk lid brazing application developed to standard applica-
tions used at many car companies (for example: Volvo,
BMW, VW, AUDI, SEAT, DC-Mercedes).
Volkswagen AG started 1992 exploring body-in-white
laser welding with the availability of high power Nd:YAG-
lasers. Laser welding applications got introduced step by
step with each new model in all manufacturing plants since
then. Volkswagen reached with the introduction of the
Golf V in 2004 a percentage of almost 50% laser welded
joints in this car. Volkswagen takes on the global lead in
laser based car production.
This paper will describe examples of the laser joining
methods used, and finally, experiences and lessons learned
will be summarized.
2 History of laser technology at
Volkswagen
Volkswagenwas not the first company to take advantage
of laser welding in the body shop. The known perfor-
mance of early CO2lasers as well as the limited flexibilityof
the mirror based beam delivery system made it not a con-
sidered alternative joining method for a long time. The
appearance of the first solid state Nd:YAGlasers with the
flexibility of directing the beam with a simple fiber optic
cable created a vision at the Volkswagen management to
* Received 2004,9.1
** Volks Wagen AG
特集
of the Auto
of the Body in
Golf V
Klaus LOEFFLER
Laser cutting, Body iii white, Application,
replace the present joining technology by lasers.
Intensive studies began in the early 1990's, that leaded to
some pilot installation and the first serial installation with
the roof joint of the VW Passat in 1996. From then on
each new car program used the advantages tested laser
applications and introduced several new laser applications
that developed into standards for the next car program.
In 2003 all car programs take advantage of laser technolo-
gy. Figure 1 shows this step-by-step development.
Volkswagen operates at the moment more than 500
lasers. The 4000 Watt lamp pumped laser manufactured
by TRUMPF has proven to be the most beneficial laser sys-
tem for Volkswagen and therefore the standard system.
The main reasons for VW's choice of lasers are short
welding cycle times, almost no wear items which equals
minimal maintenance, a reduction in component flange
width which equates to savings in weight and single sided
application that provides for new design options.
The above mentioned reasons leaded to the Golf V that
will be described in more detail in the following paragraph.
3e The production of the Golf V
The Golf V is based on the Volkswagen A5 platform first
introduced with the Audi A3 and the Volkswagen Touran.
The Golf .is the most important product for the Volkswagen
Group. With the introduction of the Golf V, the produc-
tion philosophy as well as the joining technology has been
changed dramatically (Figure 2).
The Golf V has been started up with intensive laser welding
applications in three plants at the same time. Wolfsburg/
Germany, Mosel/Germany and Brussel/Belgium. A total
of 250 4000W lasers including 3 new bodyshops had to be
installed, the plants prepared, people trained and the run-off
performed. The number of 250 4000W lasers are more
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 548

Fig. 1 History of laser applications at Volkswagen

Fig. 2 Comparison of the joining between Golf IV Fig. 3 Development of the roof joint
and Golf V.

than twice of the world production of 4000W lasers of the
year 2001. All these lasers require an total electrical ser-
vice of 40MW, produce a total of 200km of laser welds per
day or 3000 cars per day. Laser processing is the dominat-
ed joining technology and used from the platform, side
frames, framing, respot-lines and doors as well. The laser
technology allowed us to decrease the required floor space
for the side panel assembly by 50% compared to the tradi-
tional resistant spot welding technology.
The following paragraph will describe 3 representative
laser applications of the Golf V.
4. Example 1: Laser brazed roof joint
The roof joints are traditional produced by resistant spot
welding with a roof ditch of 20mm. A sealer has to be
applied after the weld as well as a plastic cover for design
reasons. Switching to lasers, Volkswagen decided in the
beginning to move to an edge laser weld with the intention
to reduce the roof ditch to 10mm an to eliminate the sealer
operation. The full benefit of laser technology has been
reached while going one step further to laser brazing on
the class A surface. Laser brazing made it possible to
“Á•W The Latest Laser Applied Technology of the Auto Industry
16 Annlir.atinns of the Ynikswaven Golf V
eliminate the sealer operation, the roof ditch cover and to
give the design engineers an invisible joint. Figure 3 illus-
trates the development of the roof joint at Volkswagen.
Parallel to the evolution of the roof joint, the laser tools
have been developed/enhanced. In the beginning the
welds have been performed with the help of additional sys-
tems (optical seam tracker, X-Y axis, process monitoring
systems). The development of the adaptive brazing optic
eliminated all the additional systems that were more or less
difficult to handle. The adaptive optic keeps the focus of
the laser beam and filler wire automatic in the joint. This
had a positive impact in cost reduction of the early systems
(less components, low accuracy robot possible, easy to han-
dle and maintain).
Summarizing the advantages of using laser brazing are
the following:
First of all, a continuous laser brazed joint eliminates the
additional sealer process. Second, a laser brazed joint
with an additional cosmetic operation can get used on class
A surfaces. Third, laser brazing offers a factor 2 increased
gap bridging capability compared to laser welding with
filler wire.
in Europe on the Example of the Body in White
LOEFFLER

5. Example 2: Laser welding
The lasers are used for welding zinc coated components
in all areas of the assembly process, starting with sub-
assemblies, platform, side frames, doors, framing station
and respot station. Most of the laser welds are performed
as overlap welds, some as edge welds. The flanch width
for spot welds of 14mm have been reduced to 8mm, which
is one reason for the achieved weight reduction. The
overlap weld joints are either two or three layer designs
with a package thickness between 1,6mm and 4mm.
variety of materials are welded together, from regular auto-
motive steels all the way to Ultra-high-strength steels (hot-
formed materials).
The known problem of welding zinc coated materials are
taken care off by using appropriate clamping (material
thickness + necessary gap) or dimples produced during the
stamping process or through special clamping devices
mounted on the laser welding optic.
The laser process (power, speed, focus position) is devel-
oped keeping a large process window in mind. The laser
welding process has to be as robust as possible for the real
world application.
The most sophisticated workstation in the body shop is
the fully laser based framing station called Laser-Framing-
Station (Figure 4). This system has been developed by
Volkswagen Tool & Die in Wolfsburg. The system takes
the tagged body, fixtures all components to geometric posi-
tion and weld 200 geometric joints beside laser brazing the
roof joint. Volkswagen has a very positive experience
using this system, since all geometrically important joints
are performed in one fixturing station.
The system is extremely compact and has a reduced
floor space requirement of 40% compared to the convention-
Fig. 4 Laser Framing Station.
549
al manufacturing method. The system is designed in a
modular way to meet any production rate up to 60 jobs an
hour. One station applies up to 14 lasers that weld simul-
taneously. A production rate of 120 jobs an hour can get
met by simply adding the hardware for a second framing
station while using the laser from the first station in a syn-
chronized pattern. The time for shuttling the parts in/out
and clamping the parts are the time where the lasers can
get used in the second station. One key to the economical
success is the intelligent use of the laser power of each sin-
gle resonator. In order to use the lasers across worksta-
A tions an intelligent Laser-Net-Work is essential. Volks-
wagen takes advantage of the TRUMPF Laser-Net-Work
The respot lines are designed without any product specif-
ic clamping. All the clamping is integrated in the roboti-
cally guided laser welding head. The reason is to offer a
solution for the trend to increase flexibility in auto body
assembly by allowing mixed production lines, flexible pro-
duction to meet customer demand and quick/low cost
changeover to new product lines. The changeover from
the Golf V to the Golf VI in a few years will show if we have
met the goal.
6 Example 3: Laser cutting of
option holes
In the European market, cars are build on customer
orders. The customers like to get a more and more cus-
tomized car with a shorter delivery time. The Golf V is
being build in 89 variations taking the different body stills
and engine/drive train components into account. With all
interior/color options Volkswagen offers more than 16,000
different configurations for the Golf V. The challenge is to
reduce the number of parts and the complexity in logistics
with the goal to react faster to the new customer require-
ments.
The ideal situation to justify laser cutting technology.
Within the Golf V production line, the right-hand-drive ver-
sion, GPS antenna and other rare chosen options are cut
with a 1kW Nd:YAG system, 2 industrial robots with autofo-
cus cutting head (compare Figure 5).
Fig 5 The laser cutting cell.
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Instead of placing the cell in the body shop, the cell is This includes design engineers and their partners, planning
installed in the paint shop and laser cutting is performed on engineers, the machine tool suppliers, laser component
the already painted body. This opens up the possibility to manufactures and all the way to the plant /maintenance
increase the batch size per color and additional to move the /operator level.
freeze point (last possibility date to react on a specific cus- Volkswagen operates more than 500 lasers on a global
tomer request) closer to the delivery date. base, all over Europe, in South America, Africa and Asia.
Laser cutting is underrepresented in the present produc-
tion lines. Laser cutting offers further potentials especially 8. Outlook
since the product life time will decrease and the number of
variations/options will increase. The cost justification for The commitment to lasers by Volkswagen has pushed
cutting dies will get more and more difficult and laser cut- the development of all aspects of laser technology. From
ting technology might be the solution. new laser resonators (Disk and Fiber) to production proven
laser processing heads for almost any laser application.

7. Conclusion VW is looking for laser resonators with an efficiency of 20%,

The goals of Volkswagen for the "laser based body shop"
have been reached.
Quality of the product
Uptime of the production line
Increased productivity
Flexibility of the production line
Reduction in floor space
The laser technology has proven itself as being a very
reliable technology for high volume production lines. The
challenge to integrate 150 lamp pumped
(HL4006D) into one single production line shows the relia-
bility of the laser related components.
Qualification programs are necessary in all areas of the
development and production process in the company in
order to reach the possible quality and economical benefits.
a required uptime of 99.8%, a smaller footprint , unlimited
fiber length for process flexibility, optimized laser usage
and improved beam quality to enhance productivity at
lower laser cost. And most important are methods to fur-
ther increase the process stability to weld zinc coated
steels. The goal is to reduce the requirements in preci-
sion clamping as well as reduce the required part accuracy
for laser joints. Both will further increase the usage of
lasers in the automotive industry.
The future designs for lightweight cars may call for more
4kW Lasers use of advanced material like carbon composites, space
frame specific materials and plastic panels. This will call
for the most efficient joining method in terms of process
stability and economy. Laser technology might be the
choice

“Á•W The Latest Laser Applied Technology of the Auto Industry in Europe on the Example of the Body in White
18 Applications of the Volkswagen Golf V LOEFFLER