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NEW LINEAR AND NON-LINEAR TAILORED BLANKS - A NEW CLASSIFICATION ACCORDING TO THEIR MANUFACTURING PROCESS In the past years the number of tailored blanks has been continuously rising in Europe, United States and Japan. From its initial beginning in 1979 at Volvo Sweden, the tailored blank applications include now rails, columns, door inner panels, wheel houses, floors, rocker panels, cross beams, shelf panels, hood reinforcements and body side rings. They all have one common feature: straight respectively linear welds. In the automotive industry the new buzz word is «non-linear welds». The reasons for non-linear welds are such as improved stampability by moving the weld seam away from the critical areas lighter tailored blanks by using only thicker gage material only where absolutely needed and inserting pockets of thicker gage sheet metal in order to valuate the impact of non-linear welds.

The applications of tailored blanks started in Europe more than 15 years ago. Since then, the market has developed into a respectable size. Mash welding was the first technology used for tailored blanks. Later laser welded blanks were introduced in the market. To overcome the poor edge quality of blanks cut with conventional shears and subsequently fitting up problems of blanks, prior to laser welding, a new edge preparation technique has been developed. The idea was to improve the reliability of the laser weld process and avoid expensive edge preparations with high precision shears and cutting dies. With a new laser welder concept incorporating the new low cost edge preparation technique, called SOUKA (Soudronic Kantenvorbereitung, edge preparation), and a vision system to control the welding process, the major disadvantages for laser welding has been overcome. The process is based on profiling the cut welding edge with a special profile roller.