Laser beam hardening - energy efficient heat treatment?

Laser beam hardening has been established during the last years as a complementary technology for local heat treatment tasks at tool manufacturing and automotive industry. Especially new high power diode lasers and a lot of process supporting systems, what have been developed in recent years, are responsible for the increase of industrial laser hardening applications. In the context of energy saving and green house gases the question about consumption of electrical energy at manufacturing of any product is asked more frequently. Application of any kind of heat treatment process will be evaluated according its energy consumption increasingly. Premise, of course, is a comparable qualification of the considered part concerning the behavior in application. After a fundamental comparison of laser heat treatment and more conventional heat treatment processes several examples will give concrete data for a comparison. These examples are industrial applications where laser heat treatment and conventional heat treatment have been or are still used for hardening of identical parts. The very high efficiency of modern high power diode lasers and the comparable low heat input are pros for low energy consumption of such processes if laser hardening can fulfill or beat the demands of the application.