overview New Directions


R&D efforts to exploit laser capabilities continue fever- ishly at national, corporate and university labs. At Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), for instance, Adrian Sabau uses coherent beams from an Nd:YAG laser to simultaneously create complex microstructures on the surfaces of carbon fiber polymer composites and aluminum to optimize their adhesive joining. The unique automated setup “is what you would have on a production line,” Sabau said. The process, ideal for the automotive and aerospace industries, is “ready to go,” Sabau asserted, merely awaiting funding for applications that involve specific geometries and integration into customized workflows. On the additive side, University of Tennessee Profes-


sor Suresh Babu, the UT-ORNL governor’s chair for ad- vanced manufacturing, said that a student of his started an aerospace company, Volunteer Aerospace, after creating aluminum components on a Concept Laser X Line 1000 powder bed printer located at ORNL. That machine is also being used to print the heat exchanger of an additively manufactured excavator as part of ORNL’s push to facili- tate commercialization of large-scale additive manufactur- ing. (The excavator’s polymer cab and metal boom are also being 3D printed at ORNL.) Meanwhile, Trumpf opened a Silicon Valley laboratory for laser applications, micro-applications and coating tech- nology using continuous wave and short and ultra-short pulsed lasers. “This means we can examine each cus- tomer’s individual requirements and ideas on site,” said Peter Leibinger, vice chairman of the managing board of


the Trumpf Group and head of the Laser Technology/Elec- tronics division. “Add to that our many years of experience, and we can identify the optimum process and the right la- ser or generator for each application.”


Concept Laser has contributed two metal AM machines to Arizona State University’s new 15,000 ft2 (1394 m2) research and prototyping facility, which houses $2 million worth of 3D printing equipment on ASU’s Polytechnic campus. At Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technol-


ogy (ILT), a host of applications using ultrashort-pulse la- sers are expected to reach commercial maturity within the


year, including: t Structuring of carbon fiber parts and components to make electrical contact


t Scaling processes with multibeam technology t Micro drilling of filters and screens in the outer skin of aircraft


t Shaped cooling holes in turbine blades Fraunhofer ILT also signed a multiyear deal in January


with French ultrafast laser maker Amplitude Systèmes to de- velop technologies and products in the multi-100 W range.


Industrial laser markets


With four top-tier laser makers—Trumpf, IPG, Coher- ent and China’s Han’s Laser—reporting roughly $1 billion in revenue for the first time in 2016, the growing demand for industrial laser applications is clear. So robust is the industry that investor Brian Feroldi said IPG is a stock he would be unlikely to ever sell in a January article for The Motley Fool.


Ï A laser engineer works with a picosecond laser system at PhotoMachining in Pelham, NH.


LF8 AdvancedManufacturing.org


Photo courtesy PhotoMachining


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