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Tailored blanks represent a basis for solving current problems in the automotive industry and are thus a product both for the present and for the future. The concept enables new ways of design which allows the manufacture of lighter, simpler and more cost effective automotive components. Tailored blanks are capable of eliminating production steps at stamping and assembly plants of our customers and thus reducing capital investments and expenditures of work.

In the past three years 1.5 million laser-welded sheets have been formed to deep drawn floor panels very successfully. Further developments of the applied laser-welding process enables joining of different sheet materials, as mild steel, HSLA, stainless and coated steel. Forming trials show the high remaining capacity of the welded blanks. The possibility of joining also different sheet thicknesses with ductil welds provides the design of lighter and stronger drawing parts or integration of several parts into one “tailored blank” reducing assembly cost. Application examples will be discussed.

In connection with the development of a fully galvanized passenger car body to be produced in large-scale series, use was made at Thyssen Stahl AG of laser welding technology to develop a new product for which no production possibilities previously existed anywhere in the world. Apart from the development of the welding technology and the application-related tests performed in parallel, an automatic production installation was designed and built in-house. By the end of 1986, some 400,000 laser-welded galvanized sheets had been successfully processed, chiefly into difficult, deep-drawn parts.