Solving a pressing problem

The ever-growing emphasis on safety in the design of today’s cars presents some significant challenges for manufacturers, and not just in the integration and development of advanced safety technologies.

One challenge is that the stronger materials designed to offer maximum passenger protection in a collision are increasingly hard to cut and modify. This is problematic when manufacturers have to punch holes in hard steel for cable routing — a process that can place considerable stress on traditional mechanical cutting tools. As these tools also leave unwanted material, or burr, on the underside of the steel, extra time has to be spent on a finishing process.

One possible alternative is to use lasers as cutters. However, although the auto industry has used high-power lasers since the early 1980s for a variety of cutting, welding and marking applications, their high-energy demands make the entire process time consuming and costly for this application.

However, researchers at Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology IWU in Chemnitz believe they may have come up with an alternative.