ORLANDO, FL, Aug. 8, 2012 — When additive manufacturing guru Terry Wohlers speaks, the laser industry listens. That’s why the Laser Institute of America featured him at its cutting-edge Laser Additive Manufacturing (LAM) Workshop last year in Houston, where Wohlers presented key findings from his annual report on global trends in LAM. LIA invited him […]
Laser Insights
A Novel Laser Trepanning System for Research and Production
By: David Ashkenasi1, Tristan Kaszemeikat1, Norbert Mueller1, Reinhard Dietrich1, Daniel Jahns1,Gerd Illing1, Hans Joachim Eichler1,2 Tino Petsch3, Jens Hänel3, Christian Scholz3 To exploit the advantages of laser technology for material processing, e.g. micro drilling and cutting, versatile trepanning systems based on rotating optics have been designed and implemented. Depending on the development stage, the trepanning systems […]
Real-Time Process Control by Machine Vision
By: Christoph Franz Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT, Aachen, Germany In recent years the use of modern solid-state lasers has brought about a distinct increase in operational speed in laser materials processing. Whether with scanners or fixed optics, high speeds – as far as possible in various axes at the same time – have […]
Investigations in Remote Cutting of Carbon Fiber Composite Materials
By: Annett Klotzbach Fraunhofer IWS Carbon fiber reinforced polymers (CFRP) are increasingly applied in the aircraft industry as well as the automobile industry. The main reason is the highly mechanical load on one hand and the low density on the other hand. Moreover, the corrosion resistance plus the damping behavior of the material can fully […]
CO2 Laser Cutting of Flexible Glass Substrates
By: Xinghua Li and Sean Garner Ultra-slim flexible glass substrates have many potential applications, spanning from photovoltaics to e-paper to touch sensors. Previously, these applications generally incorporated glass substrates in the thickness range of 0.3-1.0 mm and benefited from inherent glass properties including high optical transmission, low surface roughness, high thermal and dimensional stability, and […]