All USP lasers are mass-produced at COHERENT GLASGOW
All USP lasers are mass-produced at COHERENT GLASGOW
Blog Article
Coherent is consolidating all of the company’s ultrafast laser work, including the manufacture of all picosecond and femtosecond lasers, at its Ultrafast Center of Excellence in Glasgow, Scotland.
Coherent Glasgow is already an advanced volume production facility focused on lean manufacturing and was recently expanded to accommodate this important unification effort. Now, both flagship femtosecond lasers, such as the Coherent Monaco, and picosecond lasers, such as the Rapid and HyperRapid series, will be manufactured in Glasgow.
Chris Dorman, Executive Vice President of the Laser Business Unit, said: “Expanding the Center of Excellence for transformation will enable incredible cross-product synergies and component and process standardization, and will enable integrated resource planning.
Most importantly, this will bring many significant benefits to our customers, especially our volume OEMs, including:
A single-source source for all ultrashort pulse (USP) lasers
Accelerated product development
Reduced lead times
Increased batch processing capabilities
Increased operational flexibility
And other tangible benefits”
He added: “This major shift in corporate structure is a testament to the maturity of today’s femtosecond laser technology, which is now on par with picosecond lasers in terms of stability and long-term reliability, ease of operation, and compact and rugged packaging. This maturity is reflected in the lasers themselves and how they are used, for example, in 24/7 high-throughput industrial applications such as cutting flexible displays, life science applications such as cancer cell analysis, and in “hard core” laboratory science research areas such as attosecond physics.”
Easy-to-use, ultra-reliable, push-button femtosecond lasers
In all of these areas, femtosecond lasers have become easy-to-use, ultra-reliable, push-button tools—a far cry from the engineering innovations of just a few years ago, Dorman noted. “They are smaller and more powerful than ever before, and most types now offer advanced push-button performance in a rugged package.”
These features allow femtosecond lasers to be deeply integrated into production tools and machines for many applications in the display and semiconductor industries that must operate 24/7. These lasers are also widely used for precision cutting in medical device manufacturing, such as next-generation coronary stents.
Femtosecond lasers have also been upgraded in power, with the latest Monaco models offering up to 150 watts of infrared output, or up to 50 watts of ultraviolet output. The latter is an important performance milestone in enabling volumetric cutting of flexible displays.
This evolution in application utility is occurring in parallel with changes in the way lasers are manufactured, explained Fabian Soerensen, product line manager for industrial ultrashort pulse lasers. “While ultrashort pulse lasers have some incredibly unique capabilities, a key aspect is that they are now maturing as turnkey materials processing tools,” he said. “A wide range of customers, from large manufacturers to small job shops, no longer need in-house laser engineers. Efficient methods have been well-proven in volume production of our picosecond industrial lasers and scientific femtosecond lasers like Chameleon. Now, all of our USP/ultrafast lasers will benefit from the exact same lean manufacturing methods.”
Another driver behind this unification, Soerensen added, is the rapidly growing OEM demand for Monaco lasers in the display and semiconductor industries. “These lasers are popular in both industries, combining femtosecond pulse widths with tens of watts of UV power or up to 150 watts of NIR power to keep pace with upstream and downstream processes in high-throughput applications and meet high quality requirements,” he explained.
“We have had great success manufacturing these lasers in Santa Clara, California so far,” Sorensen concluded. “Now is the right time to move production to Scotland, where we have the right technology and expertise to increase yields with very high device-to-device consistency. We can provide the flexibility our OEM customers need while improving the reliability and overall performance of our products, transforming scientific curiosity into today’s industrial cornerstone.”