News archive for March 2019

"Revolutionary" weld joins glass to metal - the CIM does it again!

A method of welding glass and metal using an ultrafast laser system, the subject of a CIM project, has been described as a breakthrough for the manufacturing industry.

The materials are fused together using very short pulses of infrared light; the pulses last only a few picoseconds - a picosecond to a second is like a second compared to 30,000 years. To weld the two materials, the laser creates a microplasma - described as a tiny ball of lightning - between them.

The process could have direct applications in the aerospace, defence, optical technology and healthcare fields.