Laser Assisted Forming – a Valuable Extension of the Limits of Metal Shaping

During the plastic deformation of brittle materials as magnesium, titanium or high strength steels, for instance in bending of sheet metals, the local strain can exceed the ductility – the strain at rupture – and thus cracks appear that eventually lead to rupture. Hot working would be beneficial since a temperature of a few hundred centigrades leads to an increase of the ductility by more than 100%. Since during bending mentioned before the deformations take place in a narrow zone around the bending edge, selective heating for instance with a laser would be sufficient to avoid cracks. The latter concept of laser assisted bending has been successfully demonstrated and gave rise to the development of similar processes at the University of Technology in Vienna, as “Laser assisted deep drawing” and “Laser assisted wire drawing”. Other processes of laser assisted forming have been treated successfully in Aachen, Darmstadt and Erlangen. The bulk of the actual paper work is devoted to bending, deep drawing and wire drawing with laser assistance, that have been studied theoretically and experimentally by the authors department.