Thursday, Dec 20 at 9:30pm EST, National Geographic channel – DIY Death Ray
Contacted back in March, the Board of Laser Safety (BLS) assisted in connecting the producers of Rocket City Rednecks with a certified laser safety officer for the filming of tonight’s episode, DIY Death Ray. CLSO Pat Patterson had the time available to lend his LSO expertise and ensure the filming was conducted in a safe manner.
Playing the part of stereotypical “rednecks,” the five highly educated cast members use their advanced knowledge to solve “real world” problems. This usually involves constructing a machine to achieve a particular objective, such as creating a rocket that utilizes moonshine as fuel. In this episode, the Rednecks create a supersized laser-beam weapon made of laser pointers and Blu-ray players.
More vendors, more content, more onsite registrations — In its second year, LIA’s Lasers for Manufacturing Event (LME®) continued to establish itself as the industry’s only marketplace focused exclusively on photonics-based production.
LME 2012 built upon the success of last year’s inaugural session by featuring an expanded package of fundamentals courses, two new concentrated tutorials and the companion two-day Laser Welding & Joining Workshop. Held on Oct. 23-24, at the Schaumburg Convention Center in Schaumburg, IL, LME attracted another sizable group of first-time attendees. Many took advantage of the event’s proximity to their facilities to glean a wealth of information about state-of-the-art practices in laser production.
The message was clear: Advances in fiber lasers, ultrafast machining and additive manufacturing are pushing the bounds of efficient production in a broad range of industries. From automobiles and airplanes to stents and ship decks, lasers are delivering superior quality, performance and profits.
The recovery from the 2008/2009 global recession was, according to experts, going to take at least three years to reach pre-recession levels. In the United States, manufacturing companies, reacting to orders from pent-up demand and delayed 2009 buying plans, found their production taxed to meet a rapidly growing order book in 2010 followed by a banner year in 2011 and likely through 2012.
Riding on the coat-tails of a more rapid U.S. recovery (see Figure 1) were the suppliers of industrial lasers used to power systems that were being heavily utilized by six key manufacturing industries: transportation, energy, medical devices, agricultural equipment, aerospace and communications. Another sector, fabricated metal products, while slower to recover, is a market sector of importance because of the high value laser products required to cut sheet metal. Continue reading →
With new ANSI Z136 laser safety standards recently published or on the horizon, the session chairs of the LIA’s biennial International Laser Safety Conference (ILSC®) are busy shaping next year’s cutting-edge educational program.
2013 Conference General Chair Ben Rockwell, center, accompanied by LIA Executive Director, Peter Baker, right, and Past President Stephen Capp, left.
Under the oversight of four-time Chair Dr. Ben Rockwell, ILSC 2013 will build on the success of the 2011 Technical and Medical Practical Applications Seminars (PAS). Rockwell, who is also chairman of the subcommittee that produces the ANSI Z136.1 standard, envisions a good deal of instruction to be based on the recently revised Z136.3 standard regarding lasers used in health care settings and the new Z136.8 standard guiding laser use in research, development or testing.
“The laser community is moving toward having one horizontal standard with several vertical standards,” notes Dr. Rockwell, of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Fort Sam Houston, TX. “The laser safety professional needs to understand where his or her program fits into the new standardization. They’ll learn those kinds of things at ILSC.”
The primary attraction of ILSC is that the “content is updated with the community,” Dr. Rockwell says. “It brings current and cutting-edge information to the laser safety professional. As the standards change and the criteria for evaluating laser hazards change, ILSC changes. A good example is intense light sources,” one of the many topics addressed at ILSC, along with plume hazards and eye protection, new technologies, operating room procedures, nominal hazard zones and more.
Especially strong have been submissions for the two bioeffects sessions, “which makes me particularly happy because this is where the most science is,” notes Laser Safety Scientific Sessions Chair Dr. Karl Schulmeister of Austria’s Seibersdorf Laboratories. Other highlights, he says, will be presentations on broadband (non-laser) sources and product safety specifics, “for instance on the hot topic of using laser radiation to produce lamp-like emissions as well as on the challenges of home-use devices for skin treatment.”
The highly popular two-day Medical PAS, returning from 2011, will offer contact hours for attendees. Chaired by Vangie Dennis, administrative director for the Spivey Station Surgery Center outside Atlanta, it will feature an overview of the 2011 Association of Perioperative Registered Nurses Recommended Practices for Laser Safety.
“The recommended practices from AORN focus on clinical practice while optimizing laser safety through the essentials of appropriate hazard assessment with a patient focus. New and innovative types of laser systems will be discussed, and new services are continually transitioning. We’ll always have a section on aesthetics because aesthetics changes quicker than anything.”
The companion two-day Technical PAS will “provide laser safety professionals with a set of ready-to-use tools designed to immediately improve their laser safety program,” says chair Ben Edwards, assistant director of the Radiation Safety Section at Vanderbilt Environmental Health and Safety in Nashville, TN. It will emphasize “high-impact approaches that maximize their return on time and effort invested,” explains Edwards.
ILSC’s Sponsor Reception is a great networking and learning opportunity.
As with LIA’s other highly focused workshops and conferences, ILSC 2013 will give professionals with shared interests and unmatched networking opportunities through ancillary meetings, the poster presentation gallery, awards and hot topic luncheons and receptions. Experts from around the world will share their insights at the event; laser safety officers will be able to compare notes with their peers, as well as with other attendees including everyone from physicists, military personnel and environmental specialists to medical technicians, biomedical researchers and industrial hygienists.
For more information about registering to attend ILSC or for updates regarding certification maintenance points, visit www.lia.org/ilsc.
Whether you drive or fly to LIA’s fifth-annual Laser Additive Manufacturing (LAM) Workshop in Houston in February, there’s a chance at least one part on your vehicle was prototyped — maybe even produced — by LAM.
Most likely, lasers played a significant role in protecting the equipment used to process the fuel for those vehicles.
Whether they are traditional cladding applications to prevent corrosion and wear of vital parts and machinery, or 21st-century technologies that go by many names — selective laser melting, sintering, 3D printing, laser metal deposition — the latest research in these areas will be presented Feb. 12-13 at LAM 2013.
General Chair Paul Denney and Workshop Co-chairs Ingomar Kelbassa and Jim Sears are crafting an educational lineup that again runs the gamut from bread-and-butter 2D processes to groundbreaking powder-bed and 3D rapid manufacturing.
“There’s a lot going on in 3D rapid fabrication, or full functional deposition, whether it’s medical/dental, aerospace, etc.,” notes Denney of Lincoln Electric. “Very high-value, moderate-to-low volumes is still a big interest.”
Meanwhile, “there is a lot of activity and interest in surface technology — call it 2D-plus. Its large surfaces, either thin or moderately thin buildups, for corrosion protection, wear protection or repair.” Some of that is being driven by energy. “We’re drilling deeper, digging up oil sands, and we have to be able to recover that material in an economical fashion.”
Laser processing has advantages over other technologies, but it still needs to be faster and cheaper, Denney says. “It’s glamorous to do the 3D stuff, but there’s a lot going on in the old-fashioned cladding. There are people out there doing more than 200,000 pounds of powder a year at their one facility — that’s more than $8 million in powder; that’s not counting the value of the product.”
MOMENTUM FOR LAM At LAM 2012, renowned additive manufacturing consultant Terry Wohlers delivered a keynote address in which he projected significant advances in the technology across a broad range of industries. In a Sept. 15 post on his blog, Wohlers Talk, he suggests AM has reached a tipping point.
“The accumulation of activity over the past 12 months suggests that (AM) may have hit this important milestone,” he wrote. “The technology is receiving unprecedented attention by corporations of all sizes, the investment community and government agencies around the world.” He attributes this to growing mainstream media interest, the availability of relatively inexpensive personal 3D printers and a rush to identify parts produceable by AM.
But AM processes “are no stand-alone production solutions,” notes Kelbassa, of Fraunhofer ILT and RWTH Aachen University. As with subtractive manufacturing processes such as five-axis milling, “AM processes are embedded in entire horizontal and vertical process chains. They only represent single process steps. All process steps need to be addressed holistically when approaching new AM chains to be industrially implemented — from the AM design (geometric freedom) to the raw material (powder additive) to the finished product.”
That concept is informing the educational sessions at LAM 2013, he says. They will feature “new, emerging applications that are already industrially implemented in terms of maintenance, repair and overhaul of high-value parts and components. The diversification of the use and application of laser-based AM processes is mainly due to its significantly increased efficiency; AM can already compete with conventional manufacturing techniques in certain areas.”
In fact, in terms of industrial implementation, “AM is a standard production technology (Technology Readiness Level 9), such as in dental restorations like bridges, crowns and dental implants,” Kelbassa notes. “In other areas, mainly aerospace, power generation and automotive, the TRL is about 6 to 7 and increasing.” Of course, cladding and coating by laser metal deposition are standard procedure in mining, oil and offshore operations and in the areas of tool, die and mold-making, he says.
Exhibitors at LAM demonstrate the newest equipment and process available.
THE FUTURE OF LAM The promise of LAM is such that in March the U.S. proposed a National Network for Manufacturing Innovation that will “catalyze up to 15 manufacturing innovation institutes around the country,” according to the government’s Advanced Manufacturing Portal (www.manufacturing.gov). In August, the first such center — the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute — was established. NAMII “will provide the innovation infrastructure needed to support new additive manufacturing technology and products in order to become a global center of excellence for additive manufacturing. This pilot institute will bridge the gap between basic research and product development for additive manufacturing, provide shared assets to help companies, particularly small manufacturers, access cutting-edge capabilities and equipment, and create an environment to educate and train workers in advanced additive manufacturing skills.”
Of course, LIA has been leading the charge to do just that since creating the LAM workshop. The 2013 edition will spotlight trends such as progress toward significantly higher deposition rates, application-tailored materials and adapted process chains, Kelbassa says.
But innovation takes time. The average time from invention until market impact is about 15 years, he notes. Advanced AM must gain traction at a time when process and supply chains have been “planned, designed and established for subtractive manufacture.”
LAM 2013 will feature cutting-edge presentations.
Ultimately, the laser industry must focus on meeting its customers’ needs with the correct — and cost-effective — processes, Denney says.
“At the end of the day, it’s price,” he stresses. “If (manufacturers) can use cheaper powders or go to sheet, they would. Everyone’s (asking): ‘Can I do water-atomized powders or mechanically created powders instead of using gas-atomized? Can I introduce heat or processes to decrease the laser power or increase at the same laser power my deposition rate? Can I do in-situ cladding, can I do inside pipe?’” These concerns are “driving all processes, whether it’s arc or laser or plasma transferred arc welding.”
At Lincoln Electric, “we’re focusing on hot wire,” he says. “We think if you’re adding something cold to the interaction you’re increasing your power requirements in the laser. Anything I can do to keep the laser power as low as possible, which decreases my price, great. Or, if I stay at one laser power and up my feed rate, so much the better.”
To register for LAM 2013 and learn about the right solutions for you or your customers, visit www.lia.org/lam.
