Three laser companies, Coherent, LightFab, and Onefive, have been nominated in the industrial laser category of the Prism Awards, which recognises commercial products at SPIE Photonics West. The awards ceremony will take place on 17 February at the photonics and optics trade fair held in San Francisco.
Coherent was nominated for its Diamond J-3 5µm CO laser, a high power carbon monoxide operating at 5µm wavelength. The laser is designed for cutting and drilling in glass, ceramics and certain plastic films, as well as some of the dielectric materials and copper oxides used in printed circuit boards. There is low absorption at 5µm in chalcogenide fibres, opening up the potential for fibre delivery. The CO laser can also be focused to a spot two times smaller than a CO2 laser because of the shorter wavelength, meaning smaller holes and features can be produced.
German firm LightFab was nominated for an award for its 3D printer, a tabletop machine for direct laser writing of transparent materials. The system is suitable for creating micro-fluidic and micro-mechanical structures or other applications requiring high precision 3D micro-structures.
The third company up for an award is ultrafast laser company Onefive for its Katana-06 HP picosecond laser. The device can deliver short pulses from 70ps to 10ns in the 556-660nm spectral range and up to 1W of average power. The repetition rate can be adjusted from single pulse up to 100MHz. The system is an industrial-grade laser module; it is alignment-free, compact, and robust. The laser has been primarily developed to enhance the performance of STED super-resolution microscopy.