NLight, an American manufacturer of semiconductor and industrial fibre lasers, has won the 2019 Prism Award for Industrial Lasers with its Corona fibre laser at Photonics West.
The Corona fibre laser, available in 3kW, 4kW, and 5kW, offers real-time programmable beam quality, enabled by all-fibre technology. This allows for rapid tuning of the laser to optimise machine tool performance across metal types, thicknesses, and applications.
The Prism award, presented by Photonics West organisers SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, recognises outstanding examples of innovation in photonics. Industry expert judges review more than 150 applications for design and technology; novelty and innovation; need, market opportunity, and impact.
This year’s finalists for the industrial lasers category included, in addition to NLight: Israeli high-tech firm Civan Advanced Technologies for its HP Laser and Coherent Beam Combined (CBC) technology for material processing; and German laser manufacturer Trumpf, for its TruPrint 5000 3D printer, featuring three 500W fibre lasers, which was launched at Formnext last year.
Commenting on the win, Scott Keeney, CEO of NLight said: 'We are honoured to receive the Prism award and appreciate the recognition from our peers of how Corona is enabling performance improvements for our customers and their end users. We are further excited by the continued development of our programmable lasers and the new applications they will help make possible.'
'Corona exemplifies both the technical excellence and the tenacity of the nLIGHT team,' he added. 'I am proud of the entire NLight team and everyone involved in bringing this innovative product to market.'