Meet PhotoMachining, Inc. – August’s Featured Corporate Member

In 1997, John O’Connell and Ronald Schaeffer founded PhotoMachining, Inc., a world leader in precision micromachining applications. The company specializes in the use of Ultraviolet (UV) and Ultra Short Pulse (USP) lasers. Their lasers come in a wide variety of wavelengths, which enables them to provide the laser industry with laser micromachining, contract manufacturing, and […]

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Ultra-short Pulse Laser Processing of CFRP with Kilowatt Average Power

By: Christian Freitag1,2, Margit Wiedenmann1, Jan-Philipp Negel1, André Loescher1, Volkher Onuseit1, Rudolf Weber1, Marwan Abdou Ahmed1, Thomas Graf1 In order to process Carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) with a satisfying productivity, average laser powers >1 kW are necessary. Usually high average laser powers are achieved using continuous wave (cw) laser systems but the appearance of thermal damage ranging […]

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Digital Photonic Production and Its Emerging Opportunities

By Christian Hinke Digital photonic production enables us to fabricate almost any component or product directly from digital data. Experts characterize the photon or the laser as the only tool that “works” as quickly as a computer “thinks.” An office laser printer functions according to this principle and reveals what will be possible in future […]

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Carving Extremely Hard and Brittle Material with a Laser Beam

By: Dr. Lim Gnian Cher Laser is a potential tool for machining structural profiles on hard and brittle materials such as ceramics and carbides that traditional tools and methods find them near impossible to do.  EDM (electro-discharge machining) may be used for substrates that are conductive, such as tungsten carbide.  However, drilling small holes or […]

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Real-Time Control of Polarization in High-Aspect-Ratio Ultra-Short-Pulse Laser Micro-Machining

By: O. J. Allegre, W. Perrie, K. Bauchert, G. Dearden, K. G. Watkins Laser Group, School of Engineering, University of Liverpool, UK Boulder Nonlinear Systems, Inc., Colorado The past decade has seen the development of ultra-short pulse lasers, with processes based on femtosecond and picosecond pulse durations becoming increasingly widespread. Thanks to the ultra-short timescale on […]

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