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D. Schuöcker, C. Zeinar et al.:
"Laser Assisted Bending";
Talk: Proceedings of the 3rd LANE 2001, Erlangen/Germany; 08-28-2001 - 08-31-2001; in: "Proceedings LANE", (2001), ISBN: 3-87525-154-7; 475 - 482.

Laser assisted bending is a new method for bending sheet metal of brittle material with a bending press after partially heating the bending zone with a laser beam.
This new method has been developed by Trumpf Maschinen Austria and the Institute of Nonconventional Processing, Forming and Laser Technology since 1998.
In 1998 an experimental setup for small test pieces consisting of a 10kW Rofin Sinar CO2 laser and a Trumabend D50 bending press was built at the Institute of Nonconventional Processing, Forming and Laser Technology. Using this setup it was possible to show that the new method is capable e. g. of bending titanium, steel with a tensile strength of 1600N/mm2 and other brittle materials. These materials show cracks during bending at room temperature.
After these successfull experiments a new setup for test pieces of about 1000mm length was designed and has been built. With a mechanically driven scan mechanism a heated area of about 1000x6mm could be achieved. With this new machine it is possible, for example, to bend titanium sheets of 2,5mm thickness with an inner bending radius of 2,5mm.
The operation of the machine is presented, especially beam guidance and focussing in combination with a beam power control that controls the beam power according to the actual speed of the scanning mechanism.