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LASYS 2022

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LASYS International trade fair for laser material processing

LASYS, the trade fair dedicated to laser materials processing, is set to return to Stuttgart from 21 to 23 June after a four-year absence from the exhibition halls of Messe Stuttgart, alongside the renowned Stuttgart Laser Technology Forum (SLT).

The LASYS exhibition showcases technologies serving the wide range of laser materials processing applications, including cutting, welding, drilling, cleaning, marking, additive manufacturing, micromachining, surface treatment and texturing. Trade visitors will primarily consist of decision-makers from the mechanical engineering, plant construction, automotive and optical industries, with the exhibited technologies also serving the aerospace, electronics, semiconductor, medical device manufacturing, metalworking, plastics, glass processing, toolmaking and mouldmaking industries.

Gunnar Mey, department manager of exhibitions & events at Messe Stuttgart, commented: 'We are delighted to be back with LASYS after this long break and to build on what we achieved at the last event together with the industry. At the same time, we are continuing to develop LASYS so we can keep offering a platform for the latest trends and innovations in laser material processing.'

Thomas Fehn, chief sales and service officer at Trumpf Laser Technology, an exhibitor at this year’s show, added: ‘In an economic region as strong as Stuttgart, LASYS is essential to enable us to get back to face-to-face communication and live machine demonstrations on site after two years of webinars and video conferences. And the focus on laser material processing in particular makes the trade fair especially attractive for us.’

Lasers in Action Forum 

As well as the exhibition, the popular Lasers in Action Forum, hosted and programmed by Laser Systems Europe, will once again be taking place this year. The forum is open to all exhibition visitors, and through a range of engaging presentations will help deepen their understanding of laser technology and its many applications.

 

Presentation previews (date & times TBC)

Efficient laser cutting and welding of sheet metal assemblies: flexible, modular, productive - WEBINAR FRIDAY 10 JUNE, 14:00 BST

Andreas Scholz, area sales manager, Weil Technology

In the field of sheet metal processing and assemblies, production is currently characterised by different batch sizes and fluctuating order intakes. Our solution for more added value is called ‘Flexible Laser Solutions, FLS’: variable system technology for efficient laser welding and cutting of sheet metal assemblies with individual concepts.

You don’t go offroad with a sports car, do you? So, how do you find out what’s best for your sheet metal assembly production? What are the influencing factors and what are good answers to that? How about quick and easy change-over times? How about autonomous production? How about bringing several processes into one machine? How about splitting complicated processes into simple, parallel working steps with a high output? Weil Technology welcomes you to find out in this presentation.

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Customised laser micromachining processes for industrial production

Thomas Gester, head of laser application and contract manufacturing, 3D-Micromac

In the industrial manufacturing of electronic components, precision, machining quality, throughput and cost are playing an important role. This presentation will give a brief overview of different case studies where laser micromachining achieves new dimensions in terms of precision, quality and process efficiency. Different laser applications and machining solutions for industrial production will be presented. One example application is the laser processing of metal foils, including cutting, drilling, and micro structuring. Further applications cover selective ablation, through glass vias (TGV), and the cutting of CFRPs.

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Enabling new applications with ultrashort laser pulses

Kilian Fritsch, co-founder, n2-Photonics

Many applications in the fields of material processing, multiphoton microscopy and research require ultrafast lasers. Thanks to pulse durations in the order of 250fs to 1ps, material removal or microstructuring can be achieved with nearly no thermal damage. This kind of application would benefit further from even shorter pulses, especially when microprocessing and structuring glass. However, until now there have been no industrial-grade laser systems available on the market that deliver pulses significantly shorter than 200fs. Now, however, with the help of our industrial grade pulse shortening technology, nearly any industrial ultrafast laser can be equipped with an add-on module that can reliably and reproducibly shorten the pulse duration by a factor of 5 to 10, with an overall power transmission of over 90 per cent.

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Smart ultra-short pulse laser processing with rotating beam – laser micro drilling, cutting and turning

Florian Lendner, CEO, GFH

Current micro drilling, cutting and turning processes are mainly based on EDM, milling, stamping, honing or grinding. All these technologies are using a tool with a predefined geometry that is transferred to the workpiece.

In contrast the laser is a highly flexible tool, which can adapt its size very quickly and simply by the change of a software setting. Thanks to laser development efforts in recent years, stable ultrafast lasers with sufficient average power and high repetition rates have become industrially available. For using as many pulses as possible, cost-efficient production demands for innovative processes and machining setups with fast axes movement and special optics for beam manipulation.

GFH has developed helical drilling optics, which rotate the beam at up to 30,000 rpm in a very precise circle and allows the adjustment of the diameter and incidence angle. This enables the laser to be used for high precision drilling and cutting and also for micro turning processes.

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Laser beam welding in a vacuum – industrial implementations of LaVa-welding

Dr Benjamin Gerhards, product manager, LaVa-X

Laser beam welding in a vacuum (LaVa) is a process modification of laser beam welding. It combines the vacuum technology normally used in electron beam welding with the established joining technology of laser beam welding. The process is usually used in a pressure range of 1 to 100hPa and is characterised by a very high weld seam quality as well as the avoidance of pores, spatters and oxidation. The weld seams produced with LaVa welding resemble electron beam weld seams in their formation. In addition, the ‘LaVa effect’ enables the penetration depth to be increased by up to 60 per cent compared to the conventional atmospheric process, without changing the process parameters. Conversely, the energy input into the workpiece can be significantly reduced while the penetration depth remains the same, which saves energy and significantly reduces distortion.

The LaVa process is now established in many industrial areas such as electromobility, aerospace and sensor technology. The reason is that joining technology is now key in many applications, as the quality requirements for joints have increased significantly.

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Dynamic Beam Laser​ for joining applications

Dr Eyal Shekel, CEO, Civan Lasers

In the past few years, the fast-growing demand for electrically operated vehicles has surfaced the need for an industry transition toward laser-based welding processes rather than conventional technologies such as arc-welding, brazing, solid-state welding, etc. The challenges are broad and versatile and concern the minimisation of parts, difficult-to-weld alloys, dissimilar-material welding, and high-speed welding challenges when processing components such as powertrains, busbars, and hairpins, to name a few. 

However, these challenges are dealt with by conventional laser systems only to a limited extent that has not yet been established for mass production replacements. This, in part, is caused by the fact that conventional laser systems can control a limited set of process parameters, such as power, feed rate, and focus as the main exchangeable parameters, which are insufficient to allow better control of the welding process dynamics. Civan’s OPA-series Dynamic Beam Lasers precisely target the melt pool dynamic through shape stirring and predesigned power distribution profiles, by which defects such as porosity, spatter, humping, and cracks are avoided. The flexibility of the controlled parameters offered by OPA-series lasers (i.e., type of shape, shape frequency, focus stirring, power distribution profile, etc.) allows for the better refinement of process parameters for a specific task. This results in better optimisation of various welding processes that are of high industrial demand.

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3D dynamic beam shaping for laser material processing

Dr-Ing Patrick Herwig, group manager for laser cutting, Fraunhofer IWS

Macro laser material processing is no longer limited due to availability of laser power at low costs. Currently, local overheating in the centre of the process zone does not lead to an increase in process performance, but degrades the process result due to instabilities. Additional local energy deposition in high temporal resolution provides a solution to this problem. This presentation gives an insight into the technical possibilities of an implementation as well as first insights into shifting the process boundaries. Different adaptive elements for beam oscillation in the kHz range will be discussed and improvements already achieved in the field of laser cutting and welding will be shown.

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High throughput biomimetic laser surface functionalisation

Bizhan Alatif, student, Laserinstitut Hochschule Mittweida

Mimicking natural concepts by laser surface texturing holds great promise for biomimetic surface functionalities, interfaces and products. So far, it is validated that rippled textures can function as a diffraction grating for optical effects, multi-scale laser textures can induce water-repellent and self-cleaning surface behaviour, and riblet-shaped groove structures are beneficial to reduce wall shear stress and skin friction drag on solid surfaces in turbulent flows. 

The ongoing trend to higher laser powers allows high-throughput machining and large-area processing, thus paving the way for laser made surface functionalities from lab-scale research to industrial production. In this talk, we will present the latest results achieved in high-rate laser surface texturing and functionalisation, for example, by demonstrating super-hydrophobic surfaces, shark-skin inspired riblet profiles and high-friction performances. The replication of these microscopic surface structures in plastic features a further technological improvement for mass production, which enables numerous innovations in modern micromachining and advanced surface engineering.

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Selective laser melting in the micro scale

Julian Drechsel, scientific assistant, Laserinstitut Hochschule Mittweida

The micro-SLM process established at the Laserinstitut Hochschule Mittweida (LHM) is an additive manufacturing process that scratches the surface of possibility of metallic microprocessing. The process is a further development of selective laser melting (SLM), which has already been established in industry for several years. The special features of the process, namely the small focus diameter of <30µm, the small powder grain size and the resulting low structural resolutions, enable the production of various parts in the micro range, which will be presented. Micro-SLM can be used to produce a range of structures, from watch parts to aerospace components.

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Latest developments in laser-based glass additive manufacturing

Katharina Rettschlag, head of glass group, and Dr.-Ing. Peter Jäschke, head of production and systems department, Laser Zentrum Hannover

Additive manufacturing of glass and ceramic materials will open up new fields of application in the future, for example in chemical apparatus engineering, architecture, or even optics. Therefore, we are developing manufacturing processes further to produce reproducible and automatable glass components with a high level of complexity and optical quality.

The additive manufacturing of glass, also known as laser glass deposition, has been co-developed by us at the Laser Zentrum Hannover and enables the automated production of complex structures using a fibre-based process. The focus is on the automation of extensive handling, from handling the raw material to the finished product for standardised, reproducible results. Furthermore, we are working on the additive manufacturing of optics and optical components such as ball lenses. We can print on existing components as well as build up independent components layer by layer.

To set the basis for more applications for the additive manufacturing of glasses and ceramics, we are developing and evaluating processes for materials that have not yet been used for this purpose. 

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