Photonex is the UK's largest showcase event dedicated to photonics and light technologies. The event will attract 1500+ visitors to see the 102 exhibitors in Photonex, 45 in Vacuum Expo, 10 in Innovation Live! and who also will attend talks and presentations within the Enlighten conference of 8 different meetings.

Optical Engineering and Design Meeting

In recent years, Optical design techniques have had to keep up with rapid advances in photonics technology. At this meeting presentations were invited on subjects of relevance to designers of components, instruments and users of photonics equipment.The most common software constraints, design issues and manufacturing problems will also be discussed. There are several software programmes that are available for designing an optical system, but how has the software changed in recent years? 

Power Photonics were invited to present in the Optical  engineering and design meeting on Freeform micro optics for high power laser beamshaping, and Dr Roy McBride will be fronting a team that includes Matthew O. Currie, Natalia Trela, Paul Blair, Duncan Walker, Howard J. Baker, Power Photonics, UK.

The premise is that the availability of freeform optical fabrication greatly broadens the practical design space for non-imaging optics, freeing designers from constraints imposed by working with standard spherical and cylindrical elements. Many of the benefits of freeform are exploited in high-power laser beamshaping where, for example, the ability to combine convex and concave regions on a single part can be used to realise compact field-mapping beam transformers, a free choice of microlens array properties (focal length, pitch and shape) enables application-specific homogenizers that are directly matched to source and process requirements, and quasi-random refractive surfaces can provide DOE-like homogenization properties with high efficiency and high damage resistance. We describe the design and implementation of high-power beamshapers at PowerPhotonic using freeform optics, and outline how the process range achievable with freeform maps on to beamshaper capability and performance.