Check-in to recieve your badge and your registration materials. All attendees will need a badge to enter the exhibits and sessions. Registered attendees will be emailed a QR Code for their badge the day before the event. Attendees can print their badge onsite by scaning their QR code at one of FMA’s touchless self-check-in stations or by visting the registration desk.

TRUMPF Laser Technology Center | 47711 Clipper St | Plymouth, MI 48170

The Laser Technology Center brings the full range of laser material processing techniques under one roof. Enjoy an evening of machine demonstrations demonstrating TRUMPF's intelligent solutions for material structuring, surface treatment, marking, cutting, and joining, technical discussions with some of TRUMPF's industry partners, networking, food, and drinks.

Check-in to recieve your badge and your registration materials. All attendees will need a badge to enter the exhibits and sessions. Registered attendees will be emailed a QR Code for their badge the day before the event. Attendees can print their badge onsite by scaning their QR code at one of FMA’s touchless self-check-in stations or by visting the registration desk.

Visit the 20+ exhibits for live demos and information on the products and services important to you.

Make new connections over breakfast and coffee.

Welcome to ALAW 2024 - Advanced Laser Applications Workshop! Learn more about the day’s sessions and demos.

Over the past 16 years, laser welding technology has contineud to evolve at GM. This session will provide an overview of how GM has used laser welding technology and the impact it has had on the design and production of vehicles.

eVTOL, or electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing aircraft, is a type of aircraft that takes off and lands vertically using electric propulsion. What makes it special is its potential for quieter and more environmentally friendly urban air mobility, as well as its ability to bypass traditional runways making it suitable for short-distance, point-to-point transportation. The challenge with eVTOLs is they require peak performance during takeoff and landing for extended amount of time. They also require an emergency reserve in case of landing complications. This requires different battery solutions from automotive applications. There are many laser applications in the development and production of the fuel cells, batteries, electronics, and vehicle bodies.

Understand how Ford Motor Co is using lasers on the shop floor. This presentaiton will provide a virtual plant tour of the various laser welding systems being used by Ford Motor Co., highlighting the process successes and/or equipment concerns at each plant.

The automotive, energy storage, and alternative propulsion industries have rarely seen such tumultuous change as has occurred in the last few years. Companies have been racing to embrace new battery, fuel cell, and power electronics products for a wide range of applications. One common challenge in all these applications is the need to join thin metals (copper, aluminum, steel) for a multitude of electrical connections in these products. Laser welding offers many advantages for production assembly for these applications, but too little is understood about the joint design and laser system details that are required for successful production. This presentation will focus on these too-often overlooked fundamentals in thin sheet laser welding.

E-mobility is rapidly gaining importance and continues to drive the global automotive industry forward. The trend towards battery-powered vehicles remains unbroken, while fuel cells are increasingly becoming a viable future alternative. In fact many industrial applications are in place today, both in the stationary and in the mobile sectors. Particularly in the commercial vehicle sector, the fuel cell exhibits remarkable advantages over purely battery-powered vehicles. A major challenge, however, for fuel cells is the industrialization of production and scaling to higher production volumes.This presentation will examine laser welding and clamping of the bipolar plates by looking at high productive scanner concepts, high complex workpiece recordings, and state-of-the-art lasers.

Active thermal management of battery systems is crucial for improving battery cell lifetime and customer's charging experience, and it is becoming industry standard. Laser welding technologies meet the requirements for OEM's due to cooling structure designs, material combinations and variations of those. TRUMPF has developed leak-tight laser welded flexible, energy efficient cooling solutions with structural designs meeting the industry needs and saving costs of the battery assemblies. TRUMPF has specifically focused on Aluminum as the material, due to its good thermal conductivity and weight savings compared to large area steel components. This reduces the overall vehicle weight and allows increased load capacity for commercial vehicles. Welding of Aluminum has its challenges, which will be presented. However, solving the weldability problems allows for the use of Aluminum for these components, even in small lot sizes using flexible tooling, or high production volumes with small production footprint. These solutions are also easily scalable with the market demand. This presentation will give insights in the first industrial series application and into the latest developments regarding large scale cooling plates. In addition, this presentation will address the fundamentals of laser welding of Aluminum, as well as other applications with the same enabling technology.

Most working with lasers today agree that the success of the laser system lies with the laser source and its system's ability to remain consistent. Regardless of the process, different operational environments can cause the system to drift from its designed performance. These automotive-arena case studies will illustrate which environmental factors can cause these variances, suggest which parameters are beneficial to frequently measure, and introduce what products are best for taking these measurements in different operational environments.

Adoption of large cylindrical cells is trending across a growing range of auto and battery makers, driven by potential for manufacturing that can be more cost effectively scaled and automated in a form factor that is flexible for various pack and module designs while still allowing structural integrity. Lasers are key to unlocking this cell type's potential . This presentation provides an overview of the different laser applications used in their manufacturing process. Application examples in cutting, welding, cleaning, drying and texturing will be presented in the context of all aspects of the cell from bare foils to complete modules to end of life re-use.

New robotic cutting applications now require a laser cell to cut components with multiple or changing thickness such as aluminum castings and multi-layer boron steel assemblies. Aluminum castings can have thickness variations from less than 1mm of flash to over 10mm thickness. Multi-layer parts will have thicknesses of up to 3X the minimum thickness and can include small gaps between the parts. Optimized cutting speeds and cut quality are possible when using a robotic cutting head with motorized focus position. Edge quality and burr reduction are greatly improved as well as piercing time and quality when working with thicker aluminum castings. The technology and process improvements will be reviewed in this presentation.

Electric batteries add significant weight to passenger vehicles which requires offsetting through lightweighting of the vehicle. Reducing thickness of structural metallic components is a major method of reducing vehicle weight. Welding of these thin gauge materials with traditional arc processes can result in cracking and distortion. Combining the low heat input laser process with a resistance heated filler wire (i.e. hotwire laser) has enabled the joining of these materials with reduced or eliminated distortion and cracking. The hotwire laser process also accommodates joint gaps orders of orders magnitude larger than autogenous laser welding. The presented work will discuss preliminary results of a process-structure-property study of hotwire laser welding of thin gauge aluminum alloys for electric vehicle battery trays. The study includes investigations into joint gap tolerance, distortion, microstructure and defects, micro-hardness, and joint strength.

Today’s EV laser welding applications create unique challenges for monitoring and documenting weld quality in real time. The combination of thin metal sheets or foils of somewhat challenging materials (i.e. copper, aluminium, nickel, etc.), small welds with short processing times along with high quality requirements create a challenging environment for real time process monitoring. Examples of these challenges and how real time diode-based monitoring systems can help to optimize and stabilize these applications in high volume production will be given. Examples include laser welding of battery cells, cell to cell connections, cell to busbar connections, as well as bipolar plate welding.

Advancements in laser welding, crucial for battery assembly, have introduced techniques like Continuous Wave (CW) and Pulsed Laser Welding. While CW offers deep penetration, heat management is a challenge. Photon Automation's WonderBoard control system addresses this, ensuring precise control and high-quality welds in battery pack assembly.

Laser welding in transmission manufacturing opens up completely new kinds of product solutions with excellent properties in terms of wear, corrosion resistance and service life. Current welding designs, especially in the field of e-mobility, are often characterized by difficult-to-weld material combinations (e.g., quenched and tempered steel vs. cast iron) and a high component stiffness for load transfer, that is typically correlated with high residual welding stresses. The major challenge for these welded structural components therefore remains both their crack-free weldability and their complex cyclic load capacity. In this context, this contribution aims to describe a novel holistic simulation-based development approach that covers the entire chain, from load-adapted joint design through laser welding process optimization and finally to fatigue testing and assessment. Effective methods and recommendations for developing the next generation of crack-free laser weldable high performance transmission components will be shown. Specifically, a systematic study is conducted to understand and qualitatively evaluate effective methods for reducing residual weld stresses and the associated hot and cold crack criticality by up to 30% in circumferential welds. In particular, structural welding simulations are performed and verified by experimental welding trials including metallographic examinations. The presented simulation-based development methods enable the reliable production of difficult-to-weld and highly-loaded transmission components. In this way, time-consuming and cost-intensive iterations of laser welding tests can be significantly reduced or even eliminated. Furthermore, the systematic investigations provide effective recommendations for phenomenological understanding and solving typical welding challenges in practice. This applies in particular to load-transmitting components in the fields of e-mobility, aerospace and industrial engineering.

Efforts to light-weight automobiles to improve fuel economy have necessitated advances in material science, namely structural steels. HSLA and third generation steels emerged as formidable solutions both in their mechanical properties and in their formability. The multi-phase chemistry and microstructure of these new advanced high strength steels, along with a variety of coatings used on both steels introduces several weldability challenges. Adverse changes to the Heat Affected Zone (HAZ) microstructure and weld porosity are two of such challenges. This work compares the joining of HSLA and third generation steels using both conventional Gas Metal Arc Welding (GMAW) and a Hot Wire Laser process. Lap joint coupons of 2.5mm HR550LA (HSLA) and 2.0mm 980HF (3rd gen.) were welded with both processes, and compared using tensile testing, hardness mapping, and fatigue (ongoing) testing. Test coupons joined with the Hot Wire Laser Process showed a 10% increase in the median Ultimate Tensile Strength (UTS) values for both HSLA and third generation steels, exhibiting more consistent weld quality. While the hardness values were similar between both processes, the HAZ of the Hot Wire Laser welds were approximately 37% (HSLA) and 65% (3rd gen.) of the area of the correlating GMAW welds as a result of a lower degree of latent heat imparted by the Hot Wire Laser process. The improvements observed with the Hot Wire Laser trials demonstrate the potential for Hot Wire Laser to effectively join HSLA and third generation steels at a high rate of productivity with fewer detrimental defects and discontinuities.

nLIGHT Inc | 39100 Country Club Dr | Farmington Hills, MI 48331

nLIGHT Inc. is the leading provider of high-power semiconductor lasers and fiber lasers for industrial, microfabrication, and aerospace and defense applications. Join nLIGHT and its partners for an afternoon of dynamic demonstrations featuring the latest in fiber laser processing.

Precitec Inc | 28043 Center Oaks Ct | Wixom, MI 48393

Precitec invites you to their US Headquarters in Wixom, Mich. Precitec will showcase their latest advanced beam delivery systems for the eMobility market including live demonstrations featuring fiber laser solutions from Coherent. While enjoying some delicious food and drinks there will be plenty of time to chat with their experts and enjoy the networking with your industry peers.

Check-in to recieve your badge and your registration materials. All attendees will need a badge to enter the exhibits and sessions. Registered attendees will be emailed a QR Code for their badge the day before the event. Attendees can print their badge onsite by scaning their QR code at one of FMA’s touchless self-check-in stations or by visting the registration desk.

Visit the 20+ exhibits for live demos and information on the products and services important to you.

Most of the assumptions made at the start of the year have already changed. China is back to its export dominance due to deflation in that economy. The supply chain issues are back. The Fed may not lower those rates after all and then there is all the uncertainty that comes with an election. Now what indeed!

Diode lasers for automotive applications have been used for more than 20 years, first by substitution of other laser types due to a higher wall-plug efficiency (WPE). This presentation will provide an overview of the WPE technology and provide practical applications of how the technology is being used. Under the scope of a high-power output of more than 20 kW, the WPE will be discussed in the total formation process. After a quick overview of diode lasers, the presentation will review three different applications. The first application analyses a high production volume battery drying application of wet slurry-copper foils in cell production with large and adjustable spot sizes of more than 1m edge length and compared to other technologies for energy savings. The second application looks at a brake disc cladding application with two cladding heads out-of-position will be demonstrated with advantages compared to single head cladding under the green topic of fine dust reduction with high WPE laser technology. The third and final application reviews applications utilizing high power visible lasers such as hairpin welds, busbars.

The electric vehicle (EV) market is undergoing rapid expansion, driving a strong wave of innovation. A key challenge in this sector is the welding of Copper and Aluminum, materials that pose unique difficulties due to their inherent properties and the stringent welding standards required, such as minimal porosity and spatter. In response, advanced beam shaping modules utilizing Multi-Plane Light Conversion (MPLC) technology have been developed. These modules achieve beam shaping through the use of two integrated mirrors located between the collimation unit and a focusing element or scanner. MPLC technology provides exceptional flexibility in beam shaping, offering a depth of field that is four times greater than that of dual-core technologies, which greatly eases its implementation. The presentation will highlight the advantages realized in welding actual components, including battery modules, busbars, and hairpins. It will also feature an X-ray analysis of the welds. Furthermore, simulations demonstrating various beam shapes and their impact on the welding process will be shared.

The current trend in laser applications in electromobility is to increase productivity. Electric Vehicles and fuel cell applications will increase and, in addition, many of these applications involve high volumes of laser welding or welding of laser spots. When laser welding battery trays, particularly 6XXX alloys that require filler wire to prevent hot cracking, the welding speed could be increased by adding an oscillating function and using smaller spots with tactile welding optics. For other applications without additional wire, Scansonic has developed a new, very compact scanner device "Fast Component Welding Head". This pre-focused, very precise scanner head with a fast Z-shifter enables oscillation or "jumps" at a frequency of up to 1 kHz. It is designed in two directions - for single-mode laser and multi-mode multi-kW laser and offers different magnifications between 2.9 and 6.0. Welding speeds are often the limit for the productivity of a laser welding station. If the speed does not match the required cycle time, stations and corresponding handling lines were doubled. With FCW optics it is now possible to add and arrange multiple heads (and lasers) to suit the application within one laser station. This is interesting, for example, for fuel cells, chillers, busbar and hairpin welding. Scansonic CEO Dr. Axel Luft explains the optics and shows application examples. Even used as a single FCW head, this technology offers advantages in fast applications with high acceleration due to its small size and weight as well as its accuracy. This is shown using the example of welding cylindrical battery contacts with anode and cathode on the top.

In recent years, more and more automotive manufacturers are turning to laser solutions which enable faster and more reliable processing, and are more energy efficient than traditional methods. Two applications will be presented: laser drying and laser cleaning. Both laser applications offer non-contact, high-speed processing for automotive components and sub-assemblies. This presentation will highlight recent advances in these laser applications.

Dynamic Beam Lasers (DBL) are a relatively new technology in the market that allows the use of lasers in ways that were not possible in the past. The unique features enabled by DBL are being researched by both industry and academia, leading to new solutions and methods for utilizing this technology. The talk will present the latest achievements in automotive applications and the beam shapes that are being used to overcome existing challenges.

Fraunhofer USA | 46025 Port St | Plymouth, MI 48170

Fraunhofer USA, Inc. is a research and development organization working with industry, universities, and state and federal governments on contract research projects. Experience welding application demos featuring state of the art lasers from IPG, Laserline, Coherent, and TRUMPF.