While North American automakers were among the early implementers of lasers in body operations, they weren't necessarily early innovators. Welding underbodies with CO2 lasers was not only expensive, the process also required high maintenance and a graduate-level engineer and led to frequent downtime. It took European manufacturers learning from US mistakes to produce the first real manufacturing success in this area.
GSI Lumonics's autofocus robotic end effector for automotive and other industrial-laser manufacturing environments has a right-angle design that allows fiber routing without the loop typically found above cutting heads. The company will conduct a facility tour for interested ICALEO attendees on Oct. 6.
The Big Three, however, are now playing a different tune. At this year's ICALEO, running Oct. 2 through Oct. 5 in Dearborn, MI, plenary speaker Al Ver, the vice president of advanced manufacturing engineering at Ford Motor Co. (Dearborn, MI), will explore how Ford is regaining momentum in laser body weldingin part as the result of its acquisition of Volvo, Jaguar, and Land Rover. His speech will be competitively balanced by a presentation from Lawrence Burns, vice president of R&D and planning for General Motors Corp. (Warren, MI).
According to conference cochair
Jyoti Mazumder of the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI), a major focus of this year's International Congress on Applications of Lasers and Electro-Optics will be the automotive industry's use of laser technologies to replace or enhance other manufacturing processesespecially in view of the growing acceptance of aluminum autobodies. The congress will include a special Laser Applications in the Automotive Industry Conference, in addition to the Laser Materials Processing Conference and the Laser Microfabrication conference. Short courses will extend beyond automotive manufacturing, though, with topics ranging from micromachining using ultrafast pulses to infrared micromachining and engraving applications and laser processing with high-power laser diodes.
Even in the heartland of US automotive engineering, the conference sponsored by the Laser Institute of America (LIA; Orlando, FL) will retain its international flavor. Another plenary speaker will be Michael Niemeyer of Audi AG (Neckarsulm, Germany), who will discuss laser welding in the initial body structure of all-aluminum cars, including the Audi A2. This new car, which falls within the framework of Audi's Space Frame design concept, includes some 30 m of laser welds.
Nobel Laureates speak
On a fundamental research level, Physics Nobel Laureate Nicolaas Bloembergen of Harvard University (Cambridge, MA) will present a plenary speech on the interaction of pico- and femtosecond laser pulses with matter, a process presenting a unique combination of regimes of very high intensity with limited total energy deposition. Issues addressed will range from ultrafast phase transitions and the creation of relativistic electrons to the fabrication of three-dimensional arrays of submicroscopic damage spots and optical waveguides in glass with nanojoule femtosecond pulses. His speech will be complemented by that of another Physics Nobel Laureate, Charles Townes of the University of California Berkeley (Berkeley, CA), who will discuss early research programs involving the late Arthur Schawlow, as well as recent advances in IR stellar interferometry.
Other guest speakers at the ICALEO plenary session will include C. K. Patel of UCLA (Los Angeles, CA), the inventor of the CO2 laser; W. W. Hänsch of the Max-Planck-Institut fÜr Quantenoptik (Garching, Germany); and Thomas Romesser, vice president and deputy general manager for laser programs at TRW Space and Laser Programs Division (Redondo Beach, CA). This eclectic group of speakers highlights the mix of industrial laser processing and basic research that will be emphasized throughout the 19th annual ICALEO. More details are available at www.laserinstitute.org.
Paula Noaker Powell