Earlier this month, Lasertel exhibited at SPIE’s 2019 BiOS and Photonics West. This year, the show hosted over 1,300 companies and facilitated a week full of research with over 5,000 presentations and courses. For Lasertel, the week started with exhibiting at the BiOS conference, highlighting the T6 high powered laser diode, the industry standard component for laser hair removal systems.
Our team recently returned from another year at CES in Las Vegas. Similar to last year's show, we came back inspired by the innovative technology and advancements in the consumer technology space. We saw vast uses and applications for machine intelligence, AI, robotics and cameras galore! Remember the old carnival game of guess your age or weight? They have cameras for that now! There were tools that did 3D mappings of people on large stages, utilizing lasers. Attendees wandering the show floor had age range determined by a camera and got to explore the latest advancements in recognition software.
In our recent direct diode heating blog series, we expressed some of the advantages of direct diode heating, which refers to heating specific regions of a material’s surface using diode lasers. As described previously, direct diode heating provides a number of benefits over traditional methods of indirect heating, such as heating lamps. These advantages include:
Lasertel has been on the forefront of directed energy laser technology for quite some time. The team's involvement extends past manufacturing the technology, as Lasertel has also dedicated time promoting and discussing the advancements in the space with U.S. Congress. As a part of this, John Goings, Lasertel’s lead for directed energy lasers, visited Capitol Hill last month. During his visit, Goings met with 10 Committee Staff Members, including members of the DE Caucus, Senate Armed Services Committee, House Armed Services Committee, and the Military Legislative Advisers (MLA) in the following offices:
As we continue to expand our capabilities, we welcome new members to our team in both the automotive lidar and defense divisions.
Direct diode heating in industrial applications refers to heating specific regions of a material surface with a semiconductor laser diode. This is as opposed to a fiber or solid-state laser or other non-laser heating methods. In a previous article we described reasons why direct diode heating is more effective than older methods such as IR lamps, microwaves, or forced air. One of the primary advantages of diodes is their flexibility—virtually any aspect of a diode laser heating system can be designed and optimized for performance and cost. Below are 8 factors to consider when choosing a laser diode for a direct diode heating system.
Most manufacturing processes require some form of surface heating, but many products cannot be heated directly. Examples include shrink-wrapping, bonding, and annealing. Existing solutions include IR lamps, microwaves, and forced air. None of these methods are ideal—they can be imprecise, inefficient, or even a safety concern. Diode infrared lasers are emerging as an excellent non-contact method of heating surfaces. "Direct diode heating" refers to heating specific regions of a surface with patterned laser irradiation.
Permanent hair removal requires the destruction of the hair bulb located deep beneath the skin. For this application, lasers are becoming a popular alternative to electrolysis. This shift is occurring because lasers are noninvasive and the precision of the beam minimizes unnecessary damage to the surrounding skin, resulting in less pain and fewer side-effects. Lasers emit short pulses of infrared light that pass through the skin and primarily affect only the pigmented cells within the hair bulb. The heat from the laser permanently damages the cells, which prevents any further hair production.
In military applications, the reliability of a laser diode can be a literal matter of life-or-death. Functionality is critical regardless of setting. Laser diode modules that create first light within high-energy lasers, such as those used within advanced targeting systems and directed energy weapons, face particularly brutal requirements. The environment within such lasers is often more extreme than the exterior environment. For military-grade laser diodes, there are four primary environmental considerations:
