Press forming metal panels into complex shapes often causes waviness or deviations in the formed surfaces of the panel. Such deviations are undesirable, and must be smoothed before other operations may be performed on the panel, such as painting or laser brazing, or in order to provide a quality, finished appearance.
Laser brazing is a process that may be used to attach two metal panels together. The two panels are mated together along a seam, and the laser brazing process attaches the panels along a length of the seam. Typically, each of the panels will be formed to include a brazing surface, which are mated together and define the seam therebetween. In order to achieve a high quality finish, the laser brazing process requires that the seam between the two panels is very tight, with very little deviation or variance between the panels. This requires that the brazing surface of each of the panels does not include any waviness, deformations, or deviation from an ideal surface shape. Waviness or deviations from the ideal surface shape in the brazing surfaces greater than an allowable tolerance will cause the seam to be too wide, and prevent a quality joining of the two panels.
In the context of a vehicle, the laser brazing process may be used, for example, to join a body side panel to a roof panel. However, due to the three dimensional shapes in the exterior surface of vehicular bodies, the brazing surface on the body side panel often follows a very complex three dimensional path, and often must be formed in a “Z” bend portion of the panel, which makes it very difficult to press form a satisfactory brazing surface into the panels, and often introduces undesirable or unacceptable waviness into the brazing surface.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds