Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT

Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology is world-wide one of the most important development and contract research institutes of its specific field. The activities cover a wide range of areas such as the development of new laser beam sources and components, the use of modern laser measurement and testing technologies and laser-supported manufacturing.
Fraunhofer ILT is developing laser polishing of metals in close cooperation with several industrial partners. Due to numerous requests from interested companies the long-term focus of the development at FHG-ILT in the field of laser polishing is the treatment of 3D surfaces. Basics for laser polishing of 3D surfaces have been developed in the EU project poliMATIC. Together with BerlinHeart and the associated partner Clean Lasersysteme the first laser polishing robotic cell demonstrator was developed in the Innonet-project “Medisurf”.
For his ground-breaking work on laser polishing Dr. Edgar Willenborg, the group leader of the laser polishing research group at Fraunhofer FHG-ILT received the Innovation-price North-Rhine-Westphalia in 2006 and the WLT (“Wissenschaftliche Gemeinschaft Lasertechnik”) price in 2009. In 5 doctoral dissertations process fundamentals for laser polishing of steel materials have been developed and characteristics of laser polished surfaces have been investigated. FHG-ILT is the holder of some patents concerning laser polishing. The following patents will be relevant for the project: B1 / B4, B4, B4, A1.
Within the proposed project the laser polishing robotic cell will be set up at the end-user BerlinHeart and tested under industrial conditions for safe human-robot tight collaboration. Therefor FHG-ILT will adapt the laser polishing robotic cell to a collaborative system, which combines the laser polishing cell with a cleaning station and a surface metrology station, which will be accessible for the worker. Furthermore FHG-ILT will develop further the laser polishing process for 3D geometries especially of BerlinHeart.
Key persons will be Dr. Edgar Willenborg who is working in the field of laser polishing since 2000 and also wrote his Dissertation on this topic and Dipl.-Phys. John Flemmer who is working in the field of laser polishing since 2011. Additional work will be done by student workers coming from the RWTH Aachen University and other universities.

Website: Fraunhofer ILT