Two weeks ago today, the sixth-annual Laser Additive Manufacturing Workshop opened in Houston with a riveting keynote by GE Aviation’s Todd Rockstroh. Setting an attendance record, LAM 2014 closed the following day with a lively Q&A session on the qualities and varieties of AM alloys for powder-bed and powder-fed applications. It’s always illuminating to go […]
Laser Materials Processing
Atomistic Structure and Dynamic Evolution of Shock Waves in Laser-material Interaction
By: Xinwei Wang Department of Mechanical Engineering, Iowa State University This work reports on the pioneering molecular dynamics (MD) modeling of shock waves in laser-material processing. For pulsed laser-assisted material processing with an ambient gas, the fast melting, vaporization, and phase explosion of the target is a very complicated process and will form a strong […]
Laser Applications in the Automotive Industry
By: Klaus Loeffler TRUMPF Laser und Systemtechnik GmbH, Ditzingen, Germany The automotive industry has been a target market for the laser soon after the invention of the laser in 1960. Mass production and flexibility have been the arguments for the laser. The first installations in 1973 all the way to late 1980 have been successful due […]
Laser Shock Process
By: Che Zhi-gang The technique of laser shock process (LSP) is an advanced surface treatment, which import high pressure shock wave induced by laser beam into target materials to improve their performance. The fatigue life of the materials is prolonged by times through changing the stress distribution. The hardness and strength are increased remarkably and […]
Energy, Cost and Throughput Efficient Processing of Solar Cells with Tailored Lasers
By: Alexander Schell and Keming Du EdgeWave GmbH, Germany In order to reduce production costs and to increase throughput, great efforts have been put to explore efficient processing in full-automated manufacturing lines. Because of non-contact processing and high flexibility the use of lasers in photovoltaic production has grown in popularity, for example laser fired contact, drilling […]