Abridged version: In view of the demands made by the end users in the field of application of vehicle construction for an ever-higher product quality and improved performance, continuous innovations are considered to be absolutely decisive for being successful. This especially applies to the welding technology, and therefore the goal is to develop new, better and more powerful welding processes...

Lasers are now being used in the automotive industry to produce seam or stitch welds, as alternatives to conventional resistance spot welding, which are used extensively for attaching auto-body panels to subassemblies. The advantages of laser welding over resistance spot welding result from the smallness of the laser spot size, the large penetration depth of the weld into the material and the r...

Among direct metal processing manufacturing technologies (Rapid Manufacturing), Electron Beam Sintering (EBS) exhibits a high application potential. Especially, the fast beam deflection provided by electromagnetic lenses allows the realization of considerable building speeds and minor residual stresses. Therefore, this paper aims to examine and utilize the given potential for additive layer man...