Deburring and rounding of sheet metals and functionally relevant edges of parts using laser radiation

The manufacturing of sheet metal parts or component edges often leads to burrs. Due to different requirements regarding the appearance, haptics, tribology et cetera the edges have to be deburred or rounded in a subsequent process. Especially for complex geometries, automated post-processing has been difficult up to now. Laser remelting is one possible solution. It is fully automated and suitable for most 3D geometries. During laser remelting the laser beam is focused on the surface, thus a thin surface layer up to 100 mm is melted. The surface tension in the liquid state is smoothing out the surface and the edge resolidifies rounded. The radius of the rounding is adjustable by the chosen process parameters, especially laser power PL and feed speed vfeed. Furthermore the resulting roughness and the gloss level are controllable via the process parameters. Typical processing speeds are 100 mm edge length per second. First studies with industry partners showed promising results. Laser remelting of push belts for the torque transmission in CVTs lead to an increase of fatigue strength by up to 200% which enables a higher torque.