Lamps for laser system for welding, cutting, drilling and marking

Your customer needs reliable laser tools for exact welding and cutting. Laser lamps of consistently good quality are decisive.
With our powerful excitation lamps, your lasers provide reproducible results.

Laser system for welding, cutting, drilling and marking

Laser systems are the modern tool of choice for many types of processes, from welding, cutting, drilling and engraving.

Flash lamps are used as the pump source and can be operated in either Pulsed or CW (continuous) modes, gas fill types vary from Xenon or Krypton gas or a mixture of both. The envelope material is always Quartz glass, which can be doped to enhance the output of the lamp to specific wavelengths. Flash lamp pumped lasers can operate at high average powers, with Pulse durations in the millisecond regime and repetition rate up to many kilohertz.

Noblelight draws on decades of research and experience of developing flashlamp technology, in conjunction with industry leading Laser equipment OEMs. We match our lamp technology to the system operating parameters to ensure the best flashlamp performance and lifetime is achieved.

About the McNair Aerospace Centre

The University of South Carolina's McNair Centre is a university centre focused on aerospace-related education, research, K-12 STEM support, workforce development, and industry engagement. The McNair Centre research team includes over 30 faculty from mechanical, chemical, civil and electrical engineering. Named in honour of scientist and explorer Ronald E. McNair, a South Carolina native, the McNair Centre was established in 2011 through generous endowments from Darla Moore and Anita Zucker and has been further enhanced with support from alumna Marva Smalls. A dedicated team of professionals now guides our research, education and partnership efforts.

How did you hear about humm3®, and what convinced you to get a system?

Heraeus reached out to the University with the offer of a technical partnership. Through that partnership we received one of the first humm3® (6kW) prototype systems to test with dry carbon fibre and carbon fibre reinforced thermoplastics. After finding success with the initial system the conversation to acquire a more powerful more streamlined version of the humm3® began. Today we are working with the 9kW version of the humm3®. With the increased power we have been able to successfully process many thermoplastic carbon and glass reinforced materials.

How has working with humm3® benefited your work?

Humm3 installed at McNAIR Aerospace Center

The humm3® system has allowed us to continue researching high temperature thermoplastic materials. humm3® has helped to solve thermoplastic AFP material processing, in both the ability to reach temperature for laydown and tack of material, increase deposition rate, safety, and ease of process parameter development for layup.

The ability to safely operate automated fibre placement and humm3® systems from the original operations console has allowed us to continue teaching undergraduate and graduate students in a very hands-on manner as well aiding in research activities.

What future developments and initiatives are planned for your humm3®?

We hope to start working with newer high temperature materials such as ceramic matrix composites and carbon-carbon composites. Partnering with Heraeus and material suppliers we hope to be the first ones to attempt to manufacture as many cutting-edge composite materials as possible.

Interview contributions

Brandon Seay
Associate Engineer - Automated Fiber Placement programmer/operator, composite curing equipment coordinator, and main composite manufacturing process developer.

Jessie Pandher
Researcher - Specialties in thermoplastic composites, induction welding, composite structures testing and characterizing, and high temperature thermoplastic processing

Laser welding with Flash Lamps

Lasers are a popular tool for welding of metals, particularly in the automotive industry for car body welding.
Noblelight enjoys successful partnerships with many leading Laser OEMs, and have developed Xenon and Krypton flashlamps, which push the performance limits, enabling flashlamp pumped systems to still remain the preferred Laser solution.

Application fields of laser welding:

  • Automotive welding of car body
  • Mold repair
  • Jewellery welding
  • Micro welding for medical components

Laser cutting and diamond cutting

Flashlamp pumped lasers are a reliable work horse in industrial laser cutting applications. Low cost of ownership is achieved by long flashlamp lifetimes and excellent quality.

Field of applications:

  • Stent cutting
  • Diamond Sawing
  • Sheet Metal cutting

Drilling with Flash Lamps:

Drilling lasers require flashlamps capable of withstanding short pulse durations with high repetition rates and high average powers over many Millions of pulses. Excelitas Noblelight has developed unique cathode technology which increases flashlamp lifetimes in these harsher applications.

Field of applications:

  • Drilling of turbine blades
  • Drilling of hyperdermic needles

Marking with Flash Lamps

Flashlamp pumped Laser Marking systems are still used in abundance across industry.

Field of applications:

  • Keyboard / Button / Cell phone marking

Your advantages for laser welding, cutting, drilling and marking

Flash lamps transmit energy in a split second. This enables Rapid Thermal Processing, e.g. when sintering metallic inks, without overheating the film.

If the quality of arc and flash lamps is consistently high, the customer knows exactly when to replace a lamp. This makes processes more reliable.

Flash lamps must work reliably and the ignition process should be constant and repeatable. This makes sensitive applications in industry or medicine more reliable.

Our application experts give advice on finding the right solution for your process. Industrial processes can be simulated and materials tested with IR heat, UV technology or Arc and Flash systems in our Applications Competence Centers all over the world.