Jun 23 2008
QPC Lasers, Inc., a world leader in the design and manufacture of high brightness, high power semiconductor lasers for the consumer display, industrial, defense, and medical markets, announced today that it has shipped a compact BrightLase® Ultra-500(TM) laser to a North American industrial customer for use in industrial metals and plastics processing applications. Leveraging QPC's proprietary BrightLase® chip-based technology, the tiny laptop-sized laser module achieves a power output exceeding 500 watts.
“Replacing today’s colossal and power hungry lamp, solid state and gas lasers with QPC’s compact chip-based solution enables industrial customers to reduce energy costs while increasing the portability of their equipment,” said Senior Vice President of Marketing and Sales, Dr. Paul Rudy. “By utilizing our miniaturized fiber delivered laser solution, industrial manufacturers will be able to deliver the laser beam to the parts on the production line rather than bringing the parts and the production line to the laser system. In addition to the cost savings resulting from decreased energy consumption and reduced floor space, we believe the reduction in laser footprint will allow optimization of the factory layout and workflow, thereby having fundamental impact on a variety of industrial applications.”
For industrial customers, the BrightLase® Ultra-500™ provides high power and brightness at near infrared wavelengths from an energy-efficient, reliable and cost-effective package critical for laser micro-welding, engraving and marking applications. Industry leading BrightLase® technology is one of the company’s Generation III products announced in late 2007 (see press release dated December 17, 2007 and press release dated September 26, 2007) and offers up to a ten fold improvement in cost, size, weight, power consumption, and ruggedness compared to conventional non-chip based laser technology used in most industrial applications today.
“In a time of rising energy costs, the inefficient high power industrial systems used today are driving explosive increases in electricity expenses for industrial customers since many of them operate twenty-four hours per day and seven days per week. QPC’s chip-based lasers offer a more environmentally friendly ‘green’ manufacturing solution by reducing energy consumption, waste heat and related cooling costs. We believe QPC’s industrial laser solutions are well positioned to capitalize on a variety of industrial markets where high power is required from a compact laser with minimal energy consumption. As a result, we see an exciting opportunity for our power efficient, compact lasers as we begin to address the billion dollar industrial laser market,” Dr. Rudy concluded.