The accuracy of weld placement and a consistently high weld quality are some of the main objectives for automated welding processes. To achieve such a demanding standard, Scansonic's RLW-A was developed with an efficient, optimized production head to allow the welding of fillet welds in a lap joint with a unique remote laser technique.
Current vehicle body production mainly utilitzes overlap joints. With RLW-A, those overlap joints are replaced with more economical fillet welds, which reduces the necessary length of the flanges. These reduced lengths achieve cost savings and reduced weight to the welded assemblies.  This contributes to a more stable process using less laser energy for the same seam cross section.

How it works:

Optical seam tracking using laser triangulation integrated in the welding head, which recognizes the joint and positions the laser beam directly where it is required.  Due to the high working distance, the head can pass over the tooling and work piece contours. Process time is substantially reduced in comparison to tactile systems and slightly higher regarding standard laser remote heads.

The RLW-A laser system combines optical seam tracking with high dynamic scanners. This systems enables the welding of difficult 3D geometries with a wide range of joint types. During the robot movement the RLW-A detects and follows the seam by adjusting the mirrors via galvo motors according to the seam tracking measurement data.  Additional features available with this system are beam oscillation, automatic gap bridging, and the Scansonic "SCeye" vision based quality-monitoring system.

Advantages:

• The highly efficient fillet welding process allows the reduction of material for flange application in the chassis of a vehicle
• This reduced flange results in less weight and thus less fuel consumption and CO₂ emissions
• Plug & Play system. No integration on complex robot interfaces needed
• The large working distance into the running process allows traveling over clamps and fastening fixtures so that the cycle time is much shorter in comparison with other laser welding systems
• Highly dynamic seam tracking system ensures reliable finding and tracking of seam. Material and clamping device tolerances are reliably balanced
• The spot size can be adapted and also be fitted during the process by using the autofocus
• Very low consumption costs for compressed air by using a smaller cross jet because of smaller cover glasses
• Long working distance and less pollution through process splashes, smoke, etc.
• Modular design of overall system takes advantage of the Scansonic Scapacs^® modular system. Almost all types of optical characteristics, fibre couplers or Field bus interfaces are configurable
• Durable and complete solution with an ultra-modern master design that includes actuators, sensors and  Field bus-based controllers
• Highly precise seam tracking is guaranteed because the positional determination is coaxial in relation to the laser beam

Technical Specifications

Product Accessories

The following accessories are designed to further the RLW-A optical performance. Contact us for more information.

• Media coupling MEKO
• Media coupling general application interface MEKO-GAS (HTK box)
• Pointer with adjustable focal point

RLW-A Remote Laser Welding Adaptive