Greetings from not so sunny Nottingham. The summer saw a successful and interesting visit to an Open Day at Trumpf in Luton as well as the continuation of student projects, summer placements and PhD student work in materials processing innovative projects in fibre and diode laser cutting, welding, surface treatment and deposition. Now conference preparation is on us to present the work at conferences in Sweden, Portugal (GCL & HPL 2008) and, of course, California (ICALEO).

All interesting and novel findings will be revealed! In the meantime, the AILU electronic newsletter will keep you posted on latest news and developments.

And, just in case you think we have an easy life ... guess where I am travelling to present at a conference this year. You guessed it - hopefully, by then, sunny Nottingham - in October!

Janet Folkes
Lecturer, Innovative Manufacturing Processes Group,
Department of Mechanical, Materials and Manufacturing Engineering, U. of Nottingham

 

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10 September 2008
Trumpf announce an intent to purchase the entire share capital of SPI Lasers
Trumpf and SPI Lasers are pleased to announce that Trumpf intends to make an offer to buy the entire share capital of SPI Lasers

9 September 2008
Newport Introduces the SmartTable® OTS™ Optical Table System
Newport Corporation, a worldwide leader in laser and photonic solutions that Make, Manage, and Measure LightSM, today announced the sales release of the SmartTable® OTS™ optical table system.

5 September 2008
Laser Welding Pyrex Pipettes
Synrad's sealed CO2 lasers are used in a variety of industrial processes including cutting, welding, drilling, and marking.

5 September 2008
LVD laser gives Mec-a-Tec flexibility and major cost savings
When orders for its specialist conveyor systems went up by 100% in a year, Wisbech-based Mec-a-Tec Services found that it was subcontracting out more and more laser profiling. By investing in an LVD Orion 3015 Plus 4kW laser cutting machine it not only brought control over the work back in house, it also achieved an almost immediate payback on its investment.

5 September 2008
Prima Syncrono laser cutting machine helps Young & Wood keep up to speed with customer demand
For more than 60 years engineering subcontractor Young & Wood of Harlow, Essex, has manufactured a diverse range of components for architectural fittings, commercial buses and the banking industry. The company has recently installed a Syncrono laser cutting machine from Prima Industrie in order to keep production costs down and remain competitive.

5 September 2008
Pro-Lite Announces Release of LASCAD Version 3.5.4 Laser Cavity Design Software Incorporating Dynamic Multimode Analysis Tool
August 26th 2008: Pro-Lite Technology LLP (Cranfield, England) today announced the release of LASCAD version 3.5.4 laser cavity design software. The latest version of LASCAD incorporates a new tool called Dynamic Multimode Analysis (DMA) designed to improve the computer-aided design of actively Q-switched solid state lasers.

2 September 2008
Technology Strategy Board - SBRI funding - 100% support available
The Technology Strategy Board is pleased to announce that the first of the pilot competitions for the reformed SBRI programme is now open, with the Ministry of Defence. The SBRI is a procurement programme - Government Departments buy research and development services, helping to bring new technologies to market and leading to the possibility of future commercial procurement in the public sector.

27 August 2008
Rofin lasers in tube manufacture – a well rounded process
Steel tubes are today used to produce a vast array of products including water pipelines, steel furniture, machine frames and even fine tubes of less than 200µm in diameter are used within the medical device industry

27 August 2008
OEM Ultraviolet Laser Delivers Low Beam Divergence
The new MATRIX™ 355 BE from Coherent, Inc. (Santa Clara, CA) (Nasdaq: COHR) is a frequency-tripled DPSS (diode pumped solid state) laser that delivers a unique combination of low output noise and low beam divergence

21 August 2008
The LPXpro – a Classic Goes Green
The LPXpro excimer laser product line is now adjusted in its third generation to the environmentally-friendly requirements of the RoHS directive.

15 August 2008
Powerful sales growth for Trumpf Corporate group announces preliminary figures
The Trumpf Group once again achieved considerable sales growth in the 2007/2008 fiscal year. Compared to previous year, the company’s sales increased by about 10 percent to approximately 2.14 billion Euros or $3.15 billion US-Dollar based on preliminary figures.

For more news items see our news section on the AILU website.

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Picosecond lasers and their industrial applications

Gerry Jones

The use of laser technology is now well established in many industry sectors. In almost all cases its use has been based upon the laser being a thermal processing tool. It has proven itself to be a truly efficient, accurate and productive tool particularly when the laser interaction is precisely controlled. However, with the advent of ultra-short pulse lasers so-called 'cold processing' is possible i.e. material removal with negligible residual heating. Such processing is very attractive for certain applications, including expanding markets such as the manufacture of semiconductor and solar panel components.

IMAGE: A match is laser marked using cold processing with a picosecond laser.

Click here to find out more

Microcladding with a fibre laser

Torsten Jambor and Konrad Wissenbach

The current state of the art in commercially available systems for micro- laser-cladding use pulsed Nd:YAG lasers and deliver additive material in wire form. Typical laser spot diameters exceed 100 µm. The additive material is fed manually, so the quality and the reproducibility of the cladding process are strongly influenced by the personal skills of the person undertaking the task. Alternatively, a two stage process can be used. In the first step the additive material is deposited/printed on the substrate with a binder and in the second step melted by laser radiation.

IMAGE: SEM picture of a stent (courtesy Angiomed).

Some investigations have been made to develop the single step laser cladding process, but systematic investigations to realize structure sizes smaller than 100 µm with iron, cobalt and nickel alloys are still to be reported.

Click here to find out more

Fine laser cutting

Paul Harrison

Fine laser cutting is an area which in the past has tended to fall through the gap between flat-bed, large scale laser cutting on one side and laser micromachining on the other. Such topics are explained in detail elsewhere. Fine laser cutting at the sub-mm level has developed into a topic in its own right and deserves separate consideration.

IMAGE: Fine laser cutting. Scale: The length of the 11 fish bones measuring down the spine is 10mm. Note the detailed cut outs in both the head and tail.

Fine cutting can be described as cutting a relatively thin and sometimes flexible work-piece to produce small features with high accuracy and repeatability.

Click here to find out more

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Welcome to AILU Events, AILU Supported Events and Member events.

22-26 September 2008
BLM Group UK Open House: see the latest-generation ADIGE tube laser in action
The UK’s market-leading supplier of machines and systems for tube cutting, tube manipulation and production sawing, will host an in-house exhibition of its latest tube laser cutting and profiling system.

1-3 October 2008
LASERDYNE SYSTEM User Group Meeting REGISTER HERE!
LASERDYNE SYSTEMS User Group Meeting set for October 1,2 and 3, 2008. The three day meeting follows the successful 2007 meeting.

6-8 October 2008
PHOTOMETRY & SPECTRORADIOMETRY
A practical course on measurement techniques and standards. The course is intended to provide practical instruction and advice on techniques for the measurement of sources of optical radiation from the ultraviolet to the near infrared.

16 October 2008
AILU Workshop: Industrial innovation with lasers in the medical sector
This one-day meeting at Photonex 08 is to highlight developments in the application of laser technology to the burgeoning medical and biophotonics sectors. The scope of the meeting includes developments in laser sources, beam delivery, monitoring and control, auxiliary equipment, safety and standards.

15-16 October 2008
Photonex 2008
UK's Premier Photonics Event. The event is held each year at Stoneleigh Exhibition halls near Coventry.

12 November 2008
AILU Workshop: Job Shop 08
The Job Shop Group's annual business meeting is being held at Trumpf's base in Luton. It is open to AILU Members and Laser Job Shop Owners.

3 December 2008
AILU Workshop: Laser processing of polymer, metal and ceramic composites
The last AILU workshop of 2008 will be held on 3 December at the Rolls-Royce Factory of the Future within the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) with Boeing, Rotherham on the subject of ‘Laser processing of polymer, metal and ceramic composites’. Specific themes include: laser processing of polymer composites within the aerospace industry; laser processing of metallic composite components; machining, cutting, drilling and texturing of carbon fibre composites; material addition and cladding of composites; current state of the art in lasers for composite processing.

For more news items see our events section on the AILU website.

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For further information contact:

AILU
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info@ailu.org.uk
www.ailu.org.uk

Tel: +44 (0) 1235 539595
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