Objective
The use of lasers in materials welding has increased in recent years due to the speed, accuracy and flexibility of this technique. But when applied to plastics in joining applications, lasers have limitations due to the inherent properties of these materials and it is still not sufficiently applied by plastic goods manufacturers. There are many methods established for joining plastics, each with its own advantages and disadvantages (see section B2), but the most important disadvantage of the application of laser welding techniques is that the materials to be welded should be compatible to give a stable seam when cold. On the other hand, laser welding is the fastest welding method known but the dispensing and assembling activities are an important part of the welding process in terms of time consumption. Therefore, to take advantage of the laser welding speed it is necessary to optimize the dispensing and assembling operations.
The technical objective of this project is to develop a completely new, innovative and automated dispensing-assembling-laser welding process to make possible joining chemically incompatible plastic materials, using a new concept of polymeric absorbing inter-layer applied with a high tech dispensing system. In order to achieve this objective it will be necessary to develop: - new polymeric near-infrared-absorbing materials to join chemically incompatible plastics. These materials have to create a strong bond stable after solidification and clean (optically clear joints with no particulates or visible colour). - the control and optimisation of the welding parameters in order to ensure the homogeneity of the joint and to avoid degradation of the polymer and emission of toxic fumes. - a totally automated dispensing-assembling-laser welding system able to improve the quality of final products and, at the same time, to increase productivity by replacing a labour intensive process by precise and rapid dispensing-assembling-welding technology.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- engineering and technologymaterials engineeringcolors
- natural scienceschemical sciencespolymer sciences
- social scienceseconomics and businesseconomicsproduction economicsproductivity
- natural sciencesphysical sciencesopticslaser physics
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Call for proposal
FP6-2004-SME-COOP
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
COOPERATIVE -Coordinator
BRUXELLES
Belgium