Digital photonic production is more than welding, cutting

“The age of digital photonic production has dawned”, says a gratified Prof. Reinhart Poprawe, Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology (ILT) in Aachen, Germany. The new era of high-performance optical technologies fits in well with the general trend towards “Intelligence in Production”, the motto of the EMO Hannover 2013.

What will qualified laser experts be looking for at the world’s premier trade fair for the metalworking sector? “For us, the fair is an important indicator for the possible use of lasers in machine tools”, says Peter Abels, Group Leader for “Process Sensor Technology and Systems Engineering” at the Fraunhofer ILT. Here, quite a lot may happen in terms of easy-to-integrate laser technology before the autumn of 2013.

Basically, there are one or more radiation sources for every material and for well-nigh every application. “One important factor is the absorption of the material concerned”, explains the laser expert. “For instance, users can machine steels or plastics very effectively with a CO₂ laser, while fibre, disk or diode lasers are also suitable for metals like aluminium and copper.” The fibre-guided laser systems are well suited for automation and integration into machine tools, because they are much less complicated to handle than a classical CO₂ unit. 

Integration into machine tools

The laser has long since established itself in numerous sectors (such as automaking, aircraft manufacture or shipbuilding): in series production operations, it has been proving its worth for decades now in welding and cutting applications. As applications for the laser, Abels also sees tempering, component polishing, and the structuring of surfaces. “These functions would be easy to integrate into machine tools”, he says.

But there are good chances, too, for premiering series-production use of generative processes, which experts like Professor Poprawe group together under the heading of digital photonic production. What’s involved here is laser additive manufacturing (LAM), using a laserAir Jordan 30.5 Shoes