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Process planning in manufacturing today focuses on optimizing the conflicting targets of cost, quality, and time. Due to increasing social awareness and subsequent governmental regulation, environmental impact becomes a fourth major aspect. Eventually, sustainability in manufacturing ensures future competitiveness. In this paper, a framework for the planning of sustainable manufacturing is proposed. It is based on the abstraction and generalization of manufacturing resources and part descriptions, which are matched and ranked using a multi-criteria decision analysis method. Manufacturing resources provide values for cost, quality, time and environmental impacts, which multiply with their usage within a manufacturing task for a specific part. The framework is validated with a detailed modeling of a laser machine as a resource revealing benefits and optimization potential of the underlying data model. Finally, the framework is applied to a use case of a flange part with two different manufacturing strategies, i.e., laser metal-wire deposition and conventional milling. The most influential parameters regarding the environmental impacts are the raw material input, the manufacturing energy consumption and the machine production itself. In general, the framework enabled the identification of non-predetermined manufacturing possibilities and the comprehensive comparison of production resources.

Periodic micro structures on surfaces offer unique properties, such as hydrophobic behavior, holographic light reflection or friction and wear minimization. Multi-beam interference patterning is a technology to produce micro structures from several micrometers down to below 1 µm, dependent on the wavelength and angle between the interfering beams. A high power capable four-beam interference setup, designed for infrared ultrashort pulsed laser sources in the picosecond regime will be shown. The setup provides independent variation of the period, intensity distribution and pattern size of the interference pattern. The period is variable from 1 µm with a working distance of 100 mm up to 5 µm with a working distance of about 800 mm. The intensity distribution can be modified to different shapes, such as lines, holes, ripples etc. by controlling the polarization of each beam separately. The fluence of the pattern is controllable by changing the pattern size. To change the pattern size, the beam diameter can be varied by a telescope with variable focal length. The setup is built in a stable design of a size of about 300x300x300 mm³ and a weight of 4.6 kg. To avoid aberrations at high laser power, especially focus shift, the setup was designed with high reflective mirrors. An experimental verification shows the comparison between the experimental results and the calculated design and features.

Laser materials processing with ultra-short pulses allows very precise and high quality results with a minimum extent of the thermally affected zone. However, with increasing average laser power and repetition rates the so-called heat accumulation effect becomes a considerable issue.