LIA NEWS
On the show floor were some newer products, including updated CO2
devices by Alkras, which
the company touted as costing 50 per cent to 80 per cent less than other devices, with 50 per cent more efficiency and 40 per cent to 50 per cent more cutting speed and quality than fibre lasers. Meanwhile, Ophir brought its new BeamWatch monitor, which the company says measures very high-power lasers without having to intercept or disrupt the beam. Attendees also saw the compact Tangor ultrafast lasers by Amplitude Systemes, which even has a couple of customers doing nanosurgery with its devices. ‘My professor recommended that we come
down here and check it out just to see all the applications that lasers are doing,’ said Mark Hopping, who entered a laser programme at the College of Lake County in Grayslake, IL, about two weeks before LME.‘It’s blown me away and reassured me that this is a good field to get into,’ said the former financial analyst.‘Everyone was really helpful in describing everything they do and what the lasers they use are for.’
IT’S ABOUT THE ECONOMICS ‘It wasn’t too long ago that lasers were considered a laboratory curiosity,’ noted Patrick Grace of Trumpf in his address,‘Cost advantages of laser processing’. How far has laser-based manufacturing technology come in the past 10 to 20 years – and how much business is at stake? Consider the following: GE puts about 20 additively manufactured fuel
nozzles in each of its new LEAP engines for the latest generation of the 737 aircraſt, Singh noted. Manufactured through direct metal laser melting on machines featuring 200W to 400W fibre lasers, each nozzle takes about a day to make on one machine. With more than 5,000 engines sold, GE needs to fabricate close to 100,000 nozzles. ‘We probably need a few hundred machines to support production.’ He said GE has about 20 machines with more on the way. ‘To our knowledge, as things stand today, most
DIARY
Laser Additive Manufacturing (LAM) Workshop: 12-13 March 2014, Houston, TX, USA
Lasers for Manufacturing Event (LME): 23-24 September 2014, Schaumburg, IL, USA
International Congress on Applications of Lasers and Electro-Optics (ICALEO): 19-23 October 2014, San Diego, CA, USA
32 LASER SYSTEMS EUROPE ISSUE 21 • WINTER 2013
Attendees at the Laser Technology Showcase Theater
of the vendors that supply these machines are small, and the supply chain is just beginning to take hold,’ he noted. ‘Te potential of this technology is so huge that we need your help to try and mature the supply chain so we can take this technology into production. Lasers are a big part of it; materials handling is a big part of it. And this is just one component; we have a range of components that we are interested in making [with this process].’ Te engine is slated to enter production in 2016, ‘which means I need to get all these parts ready for assembly onto an engine in 2015. We are looking for high throughput on our machines; we are looking for much higher reliability, and that’s where you guys can all help us achieve our goals.’ Tese goals also include
lucrative for job shops. Although it is hard to get into the sector, it is easy to stay in once qualified because large firms want to avoid having to recertify new vendors. He also noted that, even though his is one of three job shops within 10 miles of one another, they rarely overlap competitively because of the volume of work available. (As Belforte noted, $2.8 billion worth of stents were sold in the US last year.) And since lasers are the only way to
additively manufacturing components like valves and ducting. By redesigning multipart components into one piece and manufacturing them with powder-bed processes, Singh estimates GE can save a few hundred pounds per engine – which translates into billions of dollars less in fuel consumption for his customers. In a recent design challenge GE issued, about 700 engineers competed, with the most successful able to remove up to 80 per cent of the weight of an engine bracket. ‘Te number of applications this technology
will eventually enable is huge,’ he asserted. ‘Tis is just one GE business. Our land-based gas turbine business is very interested, as is oil and gas.’ In his tutorial on microprocessing, CEO Ron
Schaeffer of PhotoMachining in Pelham, NH, noted that the medical device market can be
applications this technology will eventually enable is huge
The number of
manufacture many complex medical devices and components like stents, catheters and diagnostic tools, profits can be generous. For example, diabetes test strips include a thin conductive layer of metal or ink patterned with lasers. ‘Tis has been a big area for us; we’ve got laser systems doing this in several of the top manufacturers of these devices.’ In an exhaustive study of system
and operating costs, Schaeffer noted that picosecond lasers are coming
down in price to the point where they are as attractive as nanosecond devices for machining. He also emphasised that CO2
lasers, the most
common in the industry, are the most inexpensive on a dollars-per-photon basis, although fibre lasers can approach those prices depending on power range. Expanding on the conversation about pico- and
femtosecond lasers, Bengtsson detailed how ultrashort-pulse processing produces extraordinarily clean work thanks to diminished heat-affected zones. For example, picosecond lasers can drill crisp holes in 300µm stainless steel in about five seconds, at a cost of about $0.014 per hole. But ‘it’s not like ultrafast lasers are always better; they will be, typically, slightly slower in
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