Verfahren zum Fuegen von Werkstuecken mit Laserstrahlung

Workpieces (10, 11), in particular, those made of thick sheet metal are joined by means of a laser beam (12) focussed onto a joint zone (13) while a feed motion of the workpieces takes place relative to the laser beam which is subjected to oscillations. At the same time, additional meltable material (14) is fed into the joint zone. The improvement is that the additional material is fed into the melt bath (15) behind the laser beam with respect to the feed direction (20), and is kept outside this beam. USE - For joining components made of sheet metal. ADVANTAGE - Joining can be carried out satisfactorily in spite of shape and dimensional errors incurred during edge preparation.