Karl-Heinz Steigerwald

Karl-Heinz Steigerwald (born September 10, 1920 in Koblenz ; † 2001 ) was a German physicist.

The teacher's son attended Kaiser-Wilhelm-Realgymnasium (today: Eichendorff-Gymnasium Koblenz ) and studied physics at the technical universities in Darmstadt with Otto Scherzer and in Berlin, where he graduated as a physicist. 1942–1946 he was an assistant at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the TH Darmstadt. During the Second World War he participated in the development of a German radar device.

In 1947 he took up a position in a splinter group at the AEG research institute in Mosbach, Baden . Contrary to a prohibition by the occupying powers, he experimented with electron-optical devices. When he discovered that it was “pickle time” in his research area, electron microscopy, he tried to drill and weld metals with the ultra-short beams from the electron tube.

From 1948 to 1951 he developed the drilling process for clock stones and drawing nozzles with the electron beam (English: Electron Beam, EB). With the discovery of the deep welding effect in the 1950s, research was carried out on welding, drilling, hardening and remelting using the high-energy electron beam in a vacuum and in the atmosphere. Neither AEG nor Zeiss, for whom he has been working since 1954, found interest in his welding process. Irving Rossi bought the world rights from AEG and ordered two machines so that Steigerwald could continue to work.

In 1963 he set up his own company in Wasseralfingen, Württemberg . He was allowed to take his ten-strong development staff with him from Zeiss, and he received several hundred thousand D-Mark start-up capital from the state of Baden-Württemberg. In 1965 he moved his growing company to Munich, where Steigerwald today employs around 200 scientists, technicians and skilled workers. At the beginning of 1969 he founded a subsidiary together with the Munich machine factory Krauss-Maffei.

supporting documents

↑ Karl Heinz Steigerwald In: An International History of Electron Beam Welding, 2007, p. 19 , accessed on August 8, 2019.
↑ Karl-Heinz Steigerwald in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)

personal data
SURNAME	Steigerwald, Karl-Heinz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German physicist
DATE OF BIRTH	September 10, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH	Koblenz
DATE OF DEATH	2001

[1] Karl Heinz Steigerwald In: An International History of Electron Beam Welding, 2007, p. 19 , accessed on August 8, 2019.

[2] Karl-Heinz Steigerwald in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)