Objective
Today, glass plays a very important role in industrial regions as many new products make use of the unique properties of this material. The methods and tools to process glass, however, have not been grown in the same rate with the number of applications. The participating SME core group members, therefore, decided to investigate the potential of processing glass via high power laser radiation in order to open new markets and to fulfil the increased requirements of the customers. SME partner Genthe, for example, who manufactures head lights for car industry has to look for alternative glass cutting methods since the requirements from car designers are more 3 D oriented and cannot be processed by conventional methods. The main drawbacks of burner systems, e.g. of hydrogin gas systems, are the very expensive running costs, the low dynamical behaviour, the low efficiency and as a further technological issue which forced SME prime proposer Pulles & Hanique to develop new tools for welding and melting of glass, the missing possibilities for automation. For separation processes technical issues are small splinterings which require additional processing steps at the SME core group members Olivotto and Antas. With the rise of high power lasers a new method for the precise utilisation of thermal energy is available. Especially CO2 lasers which emit in the far infrared make use of the high absorption rates. Only with the development of cheap sealed off CO2 lasers with medium output power, this technology has become competitive for SMEs. The main technical objective is represented by an increasing product quality, a higher repeatability and the avoidance of further processing steps (grinding, cleaning, drying) by the exploitation of the thermal laser process. Highly controlable temperature gradients can cause a shattering or melting process with excellent quality. The improved controllability of lasers compared to burners will lead to more sophisticated products and as direct consequence of the possibilities to guide the laser beam very flexible, a parallel use will be able to decrease the processing time drastically. Thus, technical and economical objectives are closely connected and strongly stimulate each other. The SME core group members expect a significant technology step forward to ensure the leading position in a very competive but historic market where emerging nations and globally operating enterprises took increased market shares within the past few years. Based on the fundamental processing investigations first specific machine prototypes will be implemented during the project. Thus, first experience will be gathered by the SME core group members during the running time of the project. Full scale integration of the new laser based machinery will start directly after the completion of the project. First glass products, manufactured based on the development results, will be realistically expected 8 months after the end point. The objectives of GLAMOUR are conform to the main research task 1.1.7.M of the area 1 of the IMT work programme as the developed production systems are able to provide increased speed and accuracy of cutting, melting and surface treatment.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringmanufacturing engineering
- social sciencessociologyindustrial relationsautomation
- engineering and technologymaterials engineering
- natural sciencesphysical sciencesopticslaser physics
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Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CRS - Cooperative research contractsCoordinator
5503 LP Veldhoven
Netherlands