NEWS
Photovoltaic work wins laser innovation award at AKL
Dr Ralf Preu and his team at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems have won an innovation award worth €10,000 at the AKL International Laser Technology Congress in Aachen, Germany, from 7 to 9 May. The award was presented to
Preu for his work on Laser Fired Contact (LFC) technology for the production of highly efficient silicon solar cells. He was voted the winner from three finalists and a total of 23 submitted applications. By the use of the LFC process,
the team set several technological world records, including an efficiency of 19.5 per cent for a large area multi-crystalline silicon solar cell and 18.5 per cent for a standard sized module. Approximately one million
photovoltaic modules with Laser Fired Contacts have been produced and installed to date. The outstanding performance of these modules compared to standard technology has been confirmed in several field tests. Dr Paul Hilton, part of the
international jury comprised of nine experts, commented on the dedicated work of all three finalists and the outstanding innovations of the project teams in the field of laser technology. Preu was awarded the title of
AKL Fellow and ELI Fellow. The certificates for the first, second and third placed finalist teams were presented by Dr Ulrich Berners, president of the Arbeitskreis Lasertechnik AKL e.V. and Hilton, president of the European Laser Institute (ELI). The Innovation Award Laser
Technology is a European research prize awarded at two-yearly intervals by Arbeitskreis Lasertechnik e.V. and the European Laser Institute (ELI). The award can be conferred on an individual researcher or on an entire project group, whose exceptional skills and dedicated work have led to an outstanding innovation in the field of laser technology.
Interest in the £20,000 machine has been keen
TEST RIDING A 3D-PRINTED MOUNTAIN BIKE
A 3D printed mountain bike was one of the highlights of this year’s MACH exhibition, which took place in Birmingham, UK from 7 to 11 April. Tom Eddershaw speaks to Chris Williams at Empire Cycles about the £20,000 bike
Among the displays at the MACH 2014 event, an exhibition for manufacturing technologies held in Birmingham, UK from 7 to 11 April, was a prototype mountain bike designed by Empire Cycles and built by Renishaw. This particular bike was special in that its frame was 3D-printed. At a total cost of £20,000 it’s not cheap, but illustrates the functional abilities of additive manufacturing (AM). And there has been a lot of
interest in the bike, according to Chris Williams, managing director at Empire Cycles. ‘It seems that the world of mountain biking is watching. I am keen to keep people
28 LASER SYSTEMS EUROPE ISSUE 23 • SUMMER 2014
talking. We have spoken to literally hundreds of people and they are very intrigued. Most of the other parts [excluding the frame] were donated by companies, because they wanted to be part of the project, part of something new and innovative. We are very fortunate that everyone wants to be involved.’ The 150mm travel full
suspension MX6-R mountain bike came out of an initial project with Renishaw to build just the seat tower using additive manufacturing. The resulting component proved so successful that both parties committed to constructing the whole MX-6 frame using the
technique. Williams said that now second and third models of the prototype bike are in the pipeline and should be functional and ready for extensive testing soon. Both the seat tower and the
subsequent bike frame were built from titanium using Renishaw’s AM250 machine. The seat tower was significantly lighter than the standard aluminium version – 200g versus 360g – and proved to be strong, passing EN testing standards by a factor of six. The complete frame weighs 1.4kg compared to the standard aluminium MX6-EVO frame, which weighs 2.1kg. But the choice of material was
not solely down to weight savings, as Williams explained: ‘Renishaw suggested titanium would be a better option for the material because the aluminium powders are not high enough quality at the moment. The grades used are not
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