Autonomous Production Cell for laser beam welding

A new type of manufacturing concept for the production of the 21(st) century is lined out by the design of an "Autonomous Production Cell". Applied to and designed for laser beam welding this concept shows completely new ways in comparison to former manufacturing procedures. Shorter life time cycles of products, higher variant spectra and thus declining lot sizes demand for a closed processing chain which enables the economic production of variable products also in the future. The manufacturing process in the autonomous production cell starts with a production oriented design and planning of the welding process. Next step is a sensor controlled processing of the workpieces with integrated quality management. The quality management detects failures in the manufacturing procedure and allows back-coupling to any preceding step by the means of a multistage cascaded production controller. In comparison to former manufacturing concepts the user is at all times integrated into the manufacturing procedure. The user can add his own competence and creativity. At the same time he is being relieved by routine work and gets adequate help by the system in respective situations. The design of the components of the autonomous production cell (design and planning tools, networking of sensors and actuators, user interface, etc.) has been performed as general as possible. This offers the possibility to transfer this concept with countable efforts to other procedures besides laser beam welding such as cutting and surface treatment.