Monthly Archives: August 2015

Continuing the Townes Legacy: Ellen Townes-Anderson Presents Her Laser Research at ICALEO 2015

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Orlando, FL, Aug. 25, 2015 — Dr. Ellen Townes-Anderson, one of the four daughters of laser pioneer Charles Townes, will be a featured speaker at the Laser Institute of America’s 34th International Congress on Applications of Lasers & Electro-Optics (ICALEO®) in Atlanta, Georgia on Oct. 19, 2015.

Townes-Anderson is a professor in the Department of Neurology and Neurosciences at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School in Newark, N.J. — about 20 miles away from the Bell Labs facility where her father and Arthur Schawlow filed for their maser patent in 1958. Her current work involves using laser “tweezers” to grab neurons for study by placing them on electrodes.

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Digital Laser Dyeing

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The Effect of CO2 Laser Irradiation on Surface & Dyeing Properties of Wool for Textile Design

By Laura Morgan

A digital laser dyeing technique for woolen textiles has been developed at Loughborough University. The technique was developed to explore potential sustainable design techniques using laser technology. The research examined the effect of laser irradiation as a pre-treatment to dyeing 100 percent wool and the potential to use this as a design tool for textile processing.

The textiles and clothing sector represents the second biggest area of global economic activity in terms of intensity of trade with an economic value of over one trillion US Dollars, so the sector’s environmental impacts are hugely significant. The consumption of water, energy and chemicals used in current dyeing and finishing processes in the textile industry pose significant environmental concern and have been identified as key challenges to sustainability within the industry.  By offering alternative solutions to traditional textile wet processing through laser technology, there is potential to increase environmental sustainability through significant reduction in energy and wastewater effluent. Continue reading →

Laser Cutting of CFRP Using a 30 kW Fiber Laser

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By Dirk Herzog, Matthias Schmidt-Lehr, Marten Canisius, Max Oberlander, Jan-Philipp Tasche and Claus Emmelmann

Today, industrial usage of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic (CFRP) is steadily increasing, with an amount of 67,000 t/year. Latest products such as the Boeing 787 and Airbus A350 in the aerospace sector, as well as the BMW i3 from the automotive industry, consist of more than 50 percent of CFRP in their structural weight. At the same time these products also have comparatively high production volumes, in the five-digit range per year in the case of the BMW i3. Therefore, a higher degree in automation and cost-efficiency is needed in production. Due to the highly abrasive carbon fibers, conventional machining processes result in short tool life and high costs.

For that reason laser cutting of CFRP as a wear-free alternative has become the focus of several research groups. Two different approaches are commonly chosen: Cutting by short- and ultra-short pulsed laser systems to reach a process regime of cold ablation, and cutting with continuous wave (cw) lasers at high cutting speeds. For the latter approach, it has already been shown that by increasing power and cutting speed, the heat affected zone (HAZ) can be reduced due to less time allowed for heat conduction. Continue reading →

ICALEO 2015: Advances in Revolutionary Laser Research

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By Geoff Giordano

When Silke Pflueger attended her first ICALEO® in San Diego in the 1990s, she was a bit overwhelmed by having to give a talk about her work.

“The first presentation is scary,” she recalls. But that initial involvement has led Pflueger all the way to serving as congress general chair of ICALEO, the International Congress on Applications of Lasers & Electro-Optics, to be held Oct. 18-22 at the Sheraton Atlanta in the heart of the city. Now she is overseeing a team of conference chairs for the 2015 gathering, including:

  • Laser Materials Processing Conference: Christoph Leyens, Fraunhofer IWS
  • Laser Microprocessing Conference: Michelle Stock, mlstock consulting
  • Nanomanufacturing Conference: Yongfeng Lu, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
  • Business Forum & Panel Discussion: Klaus Loeffler, TRUMPF, and Bo Gu, BOS Photonics

“With over 200 presentations and posters on the latest in laser research, strengthened by the peer-review process introduced last year, ICALEO will provide another outstanding opportunity to learn about advances in laser material processing,” Pflueger notes in her welcome message for the ICALEO advance program (available online at www.icaleo.org). Continue reading →

The Laser’s Founding Father: Remembering Charles H. Townes

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By Geoff Giordano

Photo of Charles Townes with a ruby maser amplifier courtesy of Bell Labs

In his 1999 book How the Laser Happened, the late Charles Hard Townes explained that, “Once invented, lasers found a myriad of uses” and noted that they had advanced to the point that “the smallest lasers are so tiny one cannot see them without a microscope.”

A far cry from the heady days of the 1950s. Imagine Townes conceiving and building a maser (microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) at Columbia University before the heated race to pursue a patent for an optical maser — the laser. Imagine the fevered discussion in the scientific community as Townes and Arthur Schawlow at Bell Labs beat Gordon Gould and Technical Research Group to that first laser patent — two months before Theodore Maiman built his ruby laser for Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, CA, in 1960.

Patent, filed in 1958

 

Townes — who famously conceived the idea for the laser while sitting on a park bench in Washington, DC in 1951 — worked until his 99th year, maintaining an office at the physics department of the University of California, Berkeley. The campus honored him with a birthday celebration July 28, 2014; he passed away in January 2015. Continue reading →