Consulting in Laser Material Processing The Path Less Travelled Non-mainstream laser applications ICALEO 2014

Consulting in Laser Material Processing Laser Processing is a multi-billion dollar market: ILS estimates 2014 industrial market at 2.5 billion 1 Most of this comes from well-established applications: Metal cutting Marking Drilling Welding 1Industrial Laser Solutions vol. 26 no. 1, pp 6-9 What’s “non-mainstream”? But then there’s the other stuff

Consulting in Laser Material Processing

Well, how are you going to kill rats in a cornfield with lasers?

Consulting in Laser Material Processing How big a laser do you need? Range? Power? Duration? Steering? Safety?

Consulting in Laser Material Processing For months I was afraid they were going to send me samples

Consulting in Laser Material Processing But now people are picking on something smaller © Intellectual Ventures

Consulting in Laser Material Processing There’s real money behind this The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is exploring ways to eradicate malaria Eliminating mosquitoes from inhabited areas is an effective control method Intellectual Ventures, run by Nathan Myhrvold, is working on ways to do this using scientists who worked on SDI

Consulting in Laser Material Processing How would you kill mosquitoes with a laser? Tracking Set up a “fence” with LED’s, a retroreflector and a camera Process the silhouette to determine if it’s a mosquito Size Speed Wingbeat frequency Killing Wavelength Should be eye-safe (1.5 μm range) Beam size As small as possible over the target area (1mm?) Energy Need about 50 mJ in 5 ms (tests by Intellectual Ventures)

Consulting in Laser Material Processing So they came up with this © Intellectual Ventures

Consulting in Laser Material Processing Which sort of works

Consulting in Laser Material Processing Working with food Marking Bar codes Logos Modifying Trimming Thinning Altering

Consulting in Laser Material Processing Drilling grains of rice

Consulting in Laser Material Processing Why would you want to do this? Reduces cooking time by allowing water to reach the kernel

Consulting in Laser Material Processing But you don’t want to drill rice grains one at a time CO 2 laser 150 μm spot 30 μs pulse 10 mJ 3 kHz

Consulting in Laser Material Processing Works well, never implemented 100 μm depth 1 mm spacing

Consulting in Laser Material Processing Cosmic Debris

Consulting in Laser Material Processing Cosmic Debris These can perforate spacecraft These can damage spacecraft There’s lots of stuff orbiting the Earth 800 active satellites 29,000 objects larger than 10 cm 60,000 objects larger than 5 cm 700,000 objects larger than 1 cm 200,000,000 objects larger than 1 mm

Consulting in Laser Material Processing I know what we can do; let’s blow them out of the sky with lasers! Where do you get big enough lasers to do that? You don’t; you just use lasers big enough to push them around

Consulting in Laser Material Processing

Consulting in Laser Material Processing But you still need a pretty big ground-based laser Laser Requirements from Clean Space Laser Wavelength : between 1 and 1.1 μm Pulse width : 10 ns Energy : 10 to 50 kJ/pulse Repetition rate : > 10 Hz Beam quality : M 2 ~3 Beam pointing stability : 70 nrad Telescope Diameter : 4 to 6 m Transmission : 80% Total tracking accuracy : 100 nrad Strehl ratio : 0.8

Consulting in Laser Material Processing In San Diego, the frost is not on the pumpkin yet

Consulting in Laser Material Processing This process is labor-intensive and dangerous due to the use of big sharp knives Almost all Jack-o’-lanterns are manually generated

Consulting in Laser Material Processing We have studied ways of automating this process CO 2 laser 400 watts 400 μm spot 10 mm Rayleigh range 4 mm/sec Cycle time 217 sec.

Consulting in Laser Material Processing Edge quality and cut straightness is good Wall thickness ~40 mm

Consulting in Laser Material Processing Happy Halloween Leonard Migliore