Emission Data and Costs for Environmental Measures During Laser Joining of Metals

Laser welding and soldering are important joining processes in the automotive industry. Typical examples are the production of the car body of the VW Golf or the automatic gearbox of the Mercedes-Benz A-Class. Furthermore, there is a general trend to increase the use of lightweight materials (e.g. Mg, Al, alloys), and to combine different metallic materials to produce complex components (e.g. in tailored blanks). In order to ensure good practices with regard to occupational health and safety as well as environmental issues, laser joining processes have to be analyzed in detail. Avoiding and controlling emission products caused by laser processing of metals or metal composites is an important task in this context. Typically, costs for environmental measures represent a significant percentage of the total manufacturing costs related to a laser process.