The new Peugeot 3008, a crossover vehicle due to be introduced this summer, has a body structure that is the result of a welding process that uses three Trumpf TruDisk 6002 lasers, along with a TruDisk 4002.

The Trumpf Group (www.trumpf.com) has 57 subsidiaries that produce and supply sheet-metal fabrication machinery and industrial lasers worldwide.

In this application, the group's disk lasers have power ranges of 6 and 4 kW. They are used by PSA Peugeot to weld the doors and body reinforcements of the new model at an assembly plant in Sochaux, France. Rather than a series of individual spot welds, the disk lasers lay a full-length weld seam. “This enables us to achieve high body stiffness in our new Peugeot 3008,” according to Jean-Charles Schmitt, Product and Process laser manager at PSA.

“Compared to conventional spot welds, full-length weld seams in car body manufacturing requires less sheet folding and thickness due to a specific laser design, and thus saves about 5 kilograms of weight per vehicle,” Schmitt explains. The change allowed PSA auto designers to increase the size of the 3008's rear-quarter windows, which will create better visibility for the vehicle's driver and passengers.

PSA's four TruDisk lasers support ten processing stations, which are supplied with laser power for welding by the Trumpf LaserNetwork.

“The LaserNetwork enables us to take optimal advantage of the available power from the four disk lasers and achieve capacities of almost 100%,” Schmitt explains. He says the network design means that the automaker has no other laser source, and doesn't require one. “In case of a problem we can easily switch the whole pool of stations on the three remaining sources, with little production loss,” Schmitt says.