The Centre for Laser-based Production Processes has published it's first annual report.  The report provides an overview of the research and outreach generated by the centre since October 2013.

The academic team currently consists of 16 academic staff, 14 RAs and 8 PhD students, and we expect this to grow in the next few months, as recently approved projects get underway. This team is supplemented by 
the excellent support and important advice we have received from both our industrial advisory group (11 core partners of the centre) and our independent steering group, which between them provide input from a total of 44 different companies and other independent organisations.

We have to date co-funded with our industrial collaborators a total of 11 projects, led by 8 different Principal Investigators. In particular, our research seeks to exploit and further develop recent major advances in laser technology in two key areas: (i) a new generation of lasers with ultra-high quality and reliability based on solid state (diode, fibre) technologies that have evolved from advances in the telecoms sector; and (ii) a new generation of high average power laser technologies offering controllable trains of ultrashort (ps-fs) pulses, with wavelengths in the IR-UV. Funded projects include the development of high energy amplifiers for ultrafast lasers; research into applications enabled by ultrashort pulsed laser processes including micro-joining of glass-to-metal and high speed glass machining; the development of sensors and key parameters to enable truly smart laser processes; and the development of multi laser selective melting machines to greatly improve the speed and efficiency of metal powder-based additive manufacturing processes.

Read the report

Annual Report 2013-14 (flipbook)