Part IV

Non-conventional
Manufacturing Processes

Nonlinear Dynamics of Production Systems. Edited by G. Radons and R. Neugebauer

c 2004 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
Copyright

ISBN 3-527-40430-9

With classical manufacturing techniques, such as turning or milling, the material is usually cut
with a solid tool typically made from specially treated steel or certain ceramics, etc. Problems
that may arise and their possible solutions were treated in Part II. Nowadays there exist alternatives, which in several respects are superior to the classical methods. They use as tools, among
others, beams of particles such as sand grains, ions, or electrons, or a coherent light beam, i.e.
laser light. These techniques are often more exible regarding the geometry of the cut and
the choice of the material to be machined. Such beams are used for cutting, drilling, milling,
deburring, and so on. Also with these non-conventional methods unwanted phenomena may
occur, which nd their explanation in the realm of nonlinear dynamics. For instance, a typical
observation with beam-cutting techniques, at least for high cutting speeds, is the formation of
ripples at the cutting edge, which can be explained with concepts from pattern formation in
extended nonlinear dynamical systems.
The rst contribution in this part considers ripple formation for abrasive water-jet cutting,
where the eroding action of sand grains is used for cutting the workpiece. A phenomenological
theory is provided, which in similar form is supposed to hold for other beam-cutting techniques,
too. In addition strategies for the suppression of the striation formation are discussed on the
basis of this theory and compared with experiments. The second paper by W. Schulz et al.
treats laser cutting, where ripple formation is also one of the problems to be considered. In
addition, the formation of adherent dross is a topic of concern. Since the physical mechanisms
of lasermatter interaction are quite well understood, a more detailed mathematical description
is possible. The authors theoretical predictions and solution strategies are checked experimentally. Laser beams are not only used for separating material, but also for joining. The
corresponding technique, laser welding, is investigated in the article by J. Michel et al., again
by mathematical modeling and process monitoring. In laser cutting and welding one is mostly
interested in the long-term behavior, where a reduction of the number of relevant variables
occurs due to the dissipative nature of the process. The short-time dynamics of these processes
is more complicated and is relevant e.g. for drilling with pulsed laser radiation. In the article by
V. Kostrykin et al. this problem is treated mathematically. The following paper by R. Donner
et al. considers the problem of laser beam melt ablation and the corresponding surface structure formation more from a practical point of view: based on measured time-series a minimal
stochastic process model is suggested and analyzed. Also, the last paper in this Part IV deals
with measuring and monitoring manufacturing processes. The authors suggest a dynamic
characteristic quantity, a coarse-grained information rate, which allows to detect dynamic transitions between different process states. The method is applied to the transition from deep- to
shallow-penetration welding with laser beams, and it is demonstrated that it works also for the
automatic detection of the transition from chatter-free machining to machining with chatter in
conventional turning and grinding operations.