Automotive and Transportation
Perfect appearance – highest safety and stability
Welding connections must fulfill highest requirements in automobile manufacturing and transportation. Depending on the area of application, the focus is on fatigue duration, safety and appearance. Thick sheets are used for chassis frames, thin sheets and aluminum for lightweight construction body parts, high-strength and distortion-free steels for passenger compartments. ABICOR BINZEL offers vehicle manufacturers and their suppliers the complete range of joining technology solutions for manual, partially mechanized and automated welding processes.
Thin sheets, high-strength steel, lightweight aluminum
Vehicle construction presents a wide range of requirements for welders, robot programmers and equipment. For passenger compartments, superstructures and substructures of trucks and buses as well as axles with high-strength steel is welded distortion-free, usually in the inert gas process. This also applies to the production of trains, railway cars, and containers. Particularly long seams of thick truck and bus components are also welded quickly and without interruption in the UP procedure (arc welding procedure). When welding tankers, specific requirements for the protection of the environment or food must be considered, depending on the area of application.
Today, car bodies made of galvanised steel are often laser-soldered.
Lightweight materials such as aluminum and corrosion-resistant steels are used in components for passenger car bodies, motorcycle frames, wheel rims, seats and exhaust systems. These are often welded in the TIG or laser optic procedure with low heat input. This ensures a very good seam quality and smooth seam optics. Elaborate reworking before painting can be omitted. In the case of particularly thin sheets, plasma welding is often referred to or soldered. Mobile cranes are manufactured using the lightweight construction procedure. In this case the yield strength of the material must not be changed by welding.
Solutions for manual and automated production
Depending on production quantities and the welding task, manual, partially and fully mechanized welding processes are used in vehicle construction. Particularly in the case of large batch sizes of the same parts, partially mechanised and automated welding ensures particularly fast and economical production in consistent quality. ABICOR BINZEL has developed industry-compatible manual and robot welding torches for the laser, MIG/MAG and TIG procedure as well as for plasma welding. In addition to that, a wide range of productivity-enhancing system components around the welding robots such as torch cleaning stations, switch-off robot mounts and torch neck interfaces.
Repairs necessitate frequent changes of position and are welded manually. Lightweight, robust and mobile torches are important for this. ABICOR BINZEL offers a wide range of ergonomic and flexible torch solutions in MIG/MAG, TIG and plasma welding. In addition, the portfolio includes robust special solutions for the production of trains, railway wagons and containers, aeronautics or the defence technology, where the vehicles are exposed to extreme loads. Basically, the trend in vehicle construction is towards lightweight construction and aluminum parts. In view of the high costs and lack of labor, mechanized and automated welding procedures are the main trends in the industry.
References:
General Motors, Detroit, Michigan, USA
Re-imagining Cadillac
General Motors is one of the giants of the automotive industry, and a trailblazer in car designs and build. And when GM wanted to revolutionize the design of the Cadillac CT6, they looked to ABICOR BINZEL's laser welding optics to provide one of the key product solutions to make their groundbreaking aluminum car body a reality.
