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Cleansort’s laser-based recycling system wins €10,000


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AKL laser innovation award 2nd Place: laser beam welding of high-quality battery modules for Audi One of the biggest names in the automotive industry, Audi, was presented with the Innovation Award Laser Technology second prize for its work developing a laser beam welding process to improve the quality assurance of its EV batteries. Responding to changing consumer behaviours surrounding the threat of global warming, Audi and its parent company, the VW Group – along with most other major vehicle manufacturers across the planet – are planning for the long-term switch to electronic vehicles (EVs). Targeting neutral production by 2035,


system using lasers to simplify the recycling process by pre- sorting various materials has taken first prize for Cleansort in


the Innovation Award Laser Technology 2024, presented by Arbeitskreis Lasertechnik and the European Laser Institute. Alongside the overall winners of the open competition, a remote laser welding process used by Audi and beam- shaping laser processing technology developed by Cailabs were awarded second and third place respectively, with the three finalists being whittled down from numerous applications by a 10-member international jury.


1st Place: Cleansort’s Laser-based recycling material recognition Recycling represents an important step towards the sustainable goal of a fully circular economy. But sorting through waste material to separate what can and can’t be recycled at each step can be an arduous and inefficient task. By combining laser ablation and laser spectroscopy, Cleansort’s winning system can analyse the alloy proportions of surface-contaminated scrap metal quickly and precisely, to sort it based on its suitability for recycling. By increasing resource efficiency and


therefore reducing both material and energy costs, as well as a manufacturer’s carbon footprint, the software is considered suitable for a wide range of industrial applications, from waste incineration to the aviation and automotive industries.


the Ingolstadt-based manufacturer has developed an emission-free beam welding technique that includes tolerance compensation and the optimal positioning of the weld seams, protecting them from damage. By combining the process with AI-evaluation, the quality-control loop batch size of the system already being deployed in Audi’s prototype production is reduced to one, meaning errors are instantly recognised and remedied.


3rd Place: commercialisation of multi-plane light conversion (MPLC) for laser material processing Developed in the Laboratoire Kastler Brossel in Paris, France, the beam-shaping technology that earned Cailabs the third place prize in the Laser Innovation Award 2024 is made to improve the speed and quality of laser processes for use in


Leſt to right: Ulrich Berners, Chairman of Arbeitskreis Lasertechnik; Dr Alexander Olowinsky, Chairman of the European Laser Institute; Dr Winfried Barkhausen, Cleansort; Josef Tohlen, Clean Lasersysteme; Philipp Soest and Edwin Büchter, Cleansort; Dr Markus Kogel-Hollacher, Arbeitskreis Lasertechnik; Kristina zur Mühlen, journalist, TV presenter and qualified physicist


telecommunications and optical space-to- earth communications. The technology, which is made to


address specific issues such as porosity and spatter when welding copper and aluminium – particularly crucial materials for electromobility – works by modifying the intensity distribution of the processing laser to achieve higher process speeds and improved quality.


The Innovation Award Laser Technology Honouring outstanding innovations in laser technology, the Innovation Award Laser Technology is a European research prize that is awarded every two years to researchers and developers who have used application-oriented research to develop laser technology innovations through to commercial implementation. Arbeitskreis Lasertechnik is a network of 200 laser experts and the European Laser Institute is a renowned platform that provides knowledge and expertise on optical technologies. EO


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