Manufacturing in a cost-effective manner by means of laser cladding
KUKA Industries is consolidating these skills for the purposes of the new BMBF project. “Together with our project partners, we are aiming to develop a new system solution that is based on robots,” Neumann adds. The project partners expect the project to achieve the expected results: cost savings of up to 15%. Throughout the project, the project consortium led by KUKA Industries and the ILT will bank firmly on the benefits of directionally independent laser cladding carried out by industrial robots. Christian Goldstein, Director of Process Solutions at KUKA Industries explains, “There are virtually no limits to this process in terms of component size and geometry.” The aim of the project is to apply various materials to complex surfaces, such as curved 3D surfaces, with high build-up rates of 1-2kg/h and the best possible results. By integrating the process chains into the production system, it is possible to ensure a consistent level of data management. As such, the project also takes the conditions relating to the requirements of Industrie 4.0 into account.