CO_2Lasers and Robotics in Modern Automotive Manufacturing Lasers are used to process a growing range o interior components

摘要

Carbon dioxide lasers have been uti-lized by the automotive industry for manyyears, originally being employed forheavy duty auto body welding applica-tions. But over the last decade the adventof compact, sealed CO_2 lasers with im-proved output characteristics, togetherwith the development of more sophisti-cated robotic systems, have enabled la-sers to move into high precision process-ing tasks for non-metallic materials (e.g.for leather, plastics or carbon fiber com-posites) particularly components des-tined for automotive interiors. This articlereviews some current high precision auto-motive manufacturing applications andthe lasers and robotic technology thatservice them.