President’s Message Dear LIA members and LIA TODAY readers,
Comfortable time passes quickly. Summer is almost over, and Fall is approaching. When trees turn colorful under a clear sky, it is time for the harvest, time to reap the fruits of the year’s labor. This is also true for people working with lasers. It is time to harvest the fruits of their labor after a year of hard work in research and product development and share their research results at the ICALEO®
conference and their products at the LME® exhibition. Certainly, this is also a time
to meet our friends, shake hands, exchange friendly greetings, see smiling faces, and share exciting developments in our research and businesses.
Year after year, time repeats itself. However, we recognize the fast pace of change at the same time, particularly those of us working in of dollars to build a lab to work on “microfabrication,” which gave us a resolution of barely a few microns. When I did my graduate study, several people had to share a single argon ion laser, taking turns 24 hours a day. We also needed to warm up the laser before use, wait for the laser to cool down after each use, and adjust the power from time to time. Lasers were “high-end” equipment; expensive, delicate and hard to use. Thanks to the great efforts of engineers and entrepreneurs, revolutionary changes have been achieved in the 10 kW and ultrafast lasers with hundreds of watts. Most lasers are becoming turnkey and can easily be operated by most people with just a short training period. Laser microprocessing, such as wafer solutions.
How will lasers transform over the next two decades? It is a tough question, even for most experienced laser researchers. With my limited knowledge of laser development, I cannot make a good prediction either. I wish the laser industry could follow the evolution of the automotive industry — standardization, cost reduction and mass production. I hope it is not a crazy idea that 20 years from now we will be doing yard work using lasers.
This year we supplemented LME with the inaugural Lasers for Manufacturing Summit, both of which are featured on page 16. The state of laser manufacturing and access to key industry executives.
In this issue, the article by Christian Fornaroli on page 10 brings us very close to the dream of precise Si wafer dicing with a narrow kerf and a high quality edge. Then the always knowledgeable and irrepressible Ron Schaeffer educates us further on microprocessing on page 14.
Finally, we look ahead to our 33rd Applications of Lasers & Electro-Optics (ICALEO®
International Congress on ) where all of these
laser manufacturing processes were born and raised. Come and see what is coming next. See you in San Diego!
Executive Director’s Message
By now laser systems can claim to be some of the most reliable and long lived systems employed in manufacturing. Attendees at our annual Lasers for Manufacturing Event® (LME®
) were delighted (why not?) by having their laser questions answered and usual, loved the fact that every person coming to their booth was interested in laser systems and components and many
Peter Baker, Executive Director Laser Institute of America
Yongfeng Lu, President Laser Institute of America
www.lia.org
1.800.34.LASER
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