Periodic Reporting for period 1 - GHZ-BURST (Industrial GHz repetition rate, burst mode, ultrashort pulsed fiber laser for high speed volume-ablation micromachining applications)
Reporting period: 2019-06-01 to 2019-11-30
Aim of GHZ-BURST was to make the feasibility study for the commercialization of a newly developed high-speed micromachining regime and the required laser source. Using this new technology, it is possible to ablate more than mm3/s with micrometer resolution, which is an order of magnitude ablation rate improvement compared to the commercially available USP laser sources. In this study, market research and customer meetings were conducted to comprehend the best markets, applications, and sectors that such fast micromachining will be advantageous. Project objectives were business strategies to define and tackle the related challenges, and a straight head commercialization plan based on these foundings.
A minimum viable product was developed and initial laser material processing results were obtained. These results are used to validate the laser performance in terms of quality and speed by comparing to competitors and other studies that are being conducted in industry as well as scientific community via working with the potential customers. Potential customers were identified and classified, and sales strategies were built. Research on the current and prospective specific applications, that GHz-Burst laser will be most useful for, were conducted. Technical and business partnerships and consortiums were built to further develop the technology and to build a business strategy around the product.
Using the Lumos GHz-burst USP laser, it is possible to process materials at two orders of magnitude higher speeds and with an order of magnitude lower pulse energy. So these lasers will enable much more energy-efficient micromachining schemes while decreasing the waste of materials that occurred during the material processing. But these are only the direct effects during the processing. The real effect will be the technologies that will be enabled by this material processing scheme. There are many applications that necessitate high precision but are not commercially feasible since there is no fast-enough micromachining tools that is available to deliver this high-speed requirement. GHz-burst laser module will enable these processes. It will also support the know-how driven deep-tech industry in Turkey