Coaxial control of aluminum and steel laser brazing processes

Laser brazing has become firmly established as a joining process in the automotive industry. While this process offers many advantages, brazed seams also have to meet particularly high quality requirements. The challenge of creating a suitable online quality control system is magnified by the increasing use of aluminum in automotive engineering. This paper introduces recent works on the development of a system for controlling both aluminum and steel brazing processes. It also discusses some of the challenges connected to this task and discloses some of the results derived from the corresponding process analysis.