The technique "laser remote cutting" applies a well-focussed laser beam, which is moved along the contour of the component by the help of quickly oscillating mirrors. Here, the speed of the laser spot amounts some meters per second. Due to the interaction of the beam and the component, material is sublimated or evaporated and, thus, is continuously ablated until it is completely separated. One essential advantage of this technique is the high processing speed, which even highly-dynamic cutting plants with linear drives will never reach because of the mass inertia.

With respect to the machining of airbag tissues, the laser remote cutting technique has already been transferred into industrial applications. Together with the company Held Systems Deutschland, the IWS realized a newly developed system into a novel generation of compact and flexible laser cutting systems for airbag tailoring. On these plants a tissue of 2.5 m width is machined in a single layer manner at a speed of up to 20 m/min with an guided CO2 laser beam.

Here, most different airbag contours are cut with a precision of ± 0.5 mm. With these three already applied systems we could achieve a gain of efficiency of 50 - 90 %, compared to conventional multilayer cuts.

The aim of the IWS, however, is to enable similar gains in efficiency in the field of the tailoring of metallic materials. Already available lasers of high brilliance (fiber lasers, disk lasers) possess the necessary beam quality and performance. Combining them with the remote technique this would mean that it might revolutionize the cutting of motor gaskets made of stainless steel or the cutting of rotor/stator packages made of electric sheets.

The laser remote technique can easily cope with complicated contours. The laser-cut edges reveal a low flash and a low surface roughness. The possible material spectrum is widely diversified. In the case laser remote cutting is applied, the heat affected zone is lower, due to the higher cutting speed. Compared to conventional punching, the advantages of the remote technique are clearly lower costs for the toolmaking and the finish-grind and the lower noise level.

At the fair LASYS, Stuttgart, the IWS will demonstrate the laser remote cutting of metallic materials for the very first time. With the robot-based laser system and a scanning optics we can cut a hole matrix (100 circles with a diameter of 6.5 mm) from a 100 µm thick stainless steel sheet in less than 2 seconds ( see video ). Compared to conventional plants with linear drives that means a gain in efficiency of nearly 1000%. For sheets, which are 50 µm thick, we even need only 1.2 seconds. The cutting speed increases with decreasing beam diameter in the focus and increasing beam performance.

Please come and visit us at the fair "LASYS 2008" at Stuttgart from March, 4 to 6, 2008 at the booth of the Fraunhofer IWS Dresden, hall 4 booth E61.