Best wishes from the Raymax team for a peaceful and relaxing holiday season. We will be away from December 20, returning January 6. Wishing you all a happy and prosperous 2025.
CAMS 2024
Raymax will be in Adelaide for CAMS 2024 December 4-6 at the University of South Australia at stand 16. Come and chat to Technical Director Dr Cedric Chaminade, and Product Specialist Chris Lay, about what laser and photonics systems from Applied Spectra, Hyspex, ATL, Laserline, Civan and any of our dozens of partners can do for your processes (see all partners here).
See the Laserline cladding head that’s become the dependable workhorse of repairs in Australia’s mining, gas and oil industries. Also on show will be Civan’s dynamic beam laser – find out how dynamic beam shaping enables new processes for niche and challenging applications such as welding die-cast aluminium.
CAMS 2024 has been one of many ongoing events held over the past decade that result from cooperation between Materials Australia (MA) and the Australian Ceramic Society (ACS). The list of speakers at the conference includes leading materials research experts from Australia and around the world.
Raymax will be at stand 16 at CAMS at Adelaide Uni. Register and find out more about the event at https://www.cams2024.com.au/home.html
Cailabs: Congratulations Olivier!
The Deputy CTO of Raymax’s partner Cailabs, Olivier Pinel, has been named one of the Photonics 100 – which celebrates the innovators, disruptors and rock stars of photonics R&D.
Based in Rennes, France, Cailabs’ optics equipment offers beam-shaping technology for both high-power and ultra-short laser beams, and it can manipulate multiple beams simultaneously.
“Cailabs’ patented beam-shaping technology has the potential to improve many laser processes and optimise laser interaction with matter for better and often faster results,” says Dr Cedric Chaminade, Technical Director at Raymax Applications which distributes Cailabs’ optics in Australia and New Zealand.
“Convincing outcomes have already been achieved with Cailabs’ beam-shaping in micro-machining, welding and texturing applications,” says Cedric.
Beating turbulence
Dr Olivier Pinel is a key member of the Cailabs team striving to fix the problem of turbulence, a main obstacle to reliable optical communications through the atmosphere – especially at high speed when using coherent communication schemes. To fix this problem, the team is developing innovative optical ground stations for satellite-to-ground communications. Their technology could become vital to backbones for global high-speed internet networks.
Past approaches have typically used adaptive optics schemes which include a wavefront sensor and a deformable mirror but Dr Pinel’s team has mitigated the effects of turbulence by using a modal decomposition of the optical field and coherent recombining within a photonics integrated circuit.
“Our team has developed a new way to mitigate turbulence effects that does not involve moving parts or expensive wavefront sensors,” says Dr Pinel. The result is an optical ground station that’s reliable in a wide range of conditions, with bonuses of higher efficiency and lower cost.
Building fast internet networks
Dr Pinel believes that by unlocking the possibility of affordable, reliable, high-speed optical ground stations, large networks of feeder link stations can be deployed. This would allow for higher bandwidth satellite communication constellations. As demand for low-Earth-orbit and medium-Earth-orbit constellations grows, this technology could become fundamental to fast internet networks.
Cailabs manufactures photonic solutions with applications in space, aeronautics, processing, defence, telecommunications and energy. The company’s patented, light-shaping technology or ‘multi-plane light conversion’ (MPLC), can shape multiple beams at once for improvements in series production and research. MPLC was invented in 2010 by Jean-François and Nicolas Trep, at Kastler Brossel Laboratory and Australian National University.
Applied Spectra: The whole story on solid sample chemistry variance
Applied Spectra believes users can now investigate just about anything about solid sample chemistry variance with its latest version of its ClarityNeXtTM data analysis software.
The company has upgraded its intuitive, automated software for its laser ablation and laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) instruments for elemental and isotopic analysis.
LIBS is a rapid chemical analysis technology that uses a short laser pulse to create a micro-plasma on the sample surface. Laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (or LA & LA-ICP-MS) enables highly sensitive elemental and isotopic analysis done directly on solid samples.
The latest version of ClarityNeXtTM advances imaging and mapping capabilities with a descriptive statistics capability. This elemental imaging feature empowers users to select any region of interest in 2D or 3D maps to generate statistics on chemistry variance and frequency distribution.
The data analysis software includes advanced elemental imaging, analysis automation, and built-in algorithms for quantification and classification analysis. When combined with Applied Spectra’s hardware platforms – such as the J200 Series, RESOlution, Alphachron, and RESOchron Instruments – results are vastly improved across applications including:
- Geochemical analysis
- Forensics
- Qualitative and quantitative analysis of complex, solid sample matrices
- Manufacturing quality control:
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- pharmaceutical
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- bio-tech
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- electronics
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- solar thin films
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- and wherever the material composition is important…
- Contamination control
- Trace element analysis
- Soil and plant analysis
- Forensic analysis of glass, paint, and other trace evidence
- Geochronology
- Mineral and petroleum exploration and geo-hazards assessment
- Determination of material provenance
Amplitude Laser: Just superficial?
No – mission-critical qualities for critical applications
Precision and efficiency are critical to the aerospace industry because these are the qualities that can overcome massive challenges: weight reduction, material durability, and maintaining structural integrity. Thanks to an average power between 100 to 300W, Amplitude Laser SA’s femtosecond lasers offer the power needed for aerospace applications – and many more in industry, consumer, science and medical fields. The achievements of these lasers for the aerospace industry include:
- Drag reduction through surface riblet texturing: Amplitude’s Tangor 300 or Tangor 100 creates microstructures on surfaces that mimic the riblet textures found in nature. This significantly reduces aerodynamic drag, leading to enhanced fuel efficiency and reduced emissions.
- Precise machining of composite materials: femtosecond lasers offer high-precision machining with minimal thermal damage to ensure superior surface quality for critical components.
- Surface preparation before bonding: The Tangor 300 ensures meticulous surface preparation, boosts bonding strength and enhances structural integrity of aircraft and spacecraft.
- Anti-icing texture: Amplitude systems create textures with properties that prevent ice building up on aircraft. This improves safety and reduces use of de-icing chemicals – so it fits with sustainability goals.
“In Australia and New Zealand, Amplitude’s laser systems are used for applications as diverse as micromachining, time-resolved spectroscopy and three-photon imagery,” says Dr Cedric Chaminade, Technical Director of Raymax Applications which distributes Amplitude in the region.
“Users benefit from rugged femtosecond laser sources which have been proven in heavy-duty semi-conductor industry in 24/7 operations, mainly in South-east Asia.”
“Amplitude’s fibre technology enables unique features such as flexible and rapid repetition rate adjustment, fixed delay and narrow jitter for ease of integration and synchronisation, as well as GHz pulses for 3,000 pulses – and more,” says Cedric.
Femtosecond lasers emit optical pulses with a duration well below 1 ps (1 fs = 10−15 seconds), so they’re categorised as ultra-fast or ultra-short pulse lasers – and include picosecond lasers.
HySpex launches space group
For decades, Norsk Elektro Optikk (NEO) has been at the forefront of hyperspectral camera technology. Lately, NEO has been fielding increasing inquiries about adapting its HySpex hyperspectral cameras for satellite applications.
So NEO established a dedicated space business group earlier this year: the company is investing in state-of-the-art infrastructure, including a class-7 cleanroom and a thermal vacuum chamber for assembling and testing space hardware.
The cleanroom will be running by Christmas, just in time for testing NEO’s HyperNOR instrument which was developed under the European Space Agency General Support Technology Program.
John Grace, CEO of Raymax Applications which distributes HySpex cameras in Australia and New Zealand, recalls that NEO has been working on more compact hyperspectral equipment for satellites for a generation.
“Before HySpex became a reference worldwide for stability, flexibility and superior data quality in hyperspectral imaging, NEO started its activities in this field in 1995 with the Hyperspectral Imager for Small Satellites project for the European Space Agency,” says John.
“Nowadays, with the support of the Norwegian Space Centre, NEO has taken the challenge of developing a space-qualified, low-cost, low-weight, low-volume hyperspectral imager with competitive performance in terms of ground sample distance.”
GSD a weak point
Based on its customers’ views and what NEO saw as the general opinion of participants in the 2021 PRISMA workshop – hosted by the Italian Space Agency which owns the PRISMA Earth observation system – NEO decided ground sampling distance (GSD) is a weak point that limits the usefulness of hyperspectral imagers (HSIs).
Typically, the GSD of existing and planned satellite HSIs is rarely less than 30 metres in the short-wave, infra-red range (1000 to 2500 nm). In contrast, GSD for the HyperNOR instrument is 9 meters from 500 km altitude.
“Huge institutional instruments require equally large satellite platforms and, in the end, the cost will also be huge,” says Lars Lierstuen, who heads NEO’s new Space and Business Development group.
“One of the goals of HyperNOR is to devise an HSI that surpasses common limitations of small satellite platforms and, in some respects, provides hyperspectral data that are better than what is currently available, free, from larger instruments like PRISMA.”
HyperNOR’s main features include:
- Short Wave Infra-Red spectral range (950 to 2,500nm)
- Swath at 500km : 5.8km
- Number of spatial pixels across track: 640 or 1,280
- System’s neat, small size (mm) at 360 x 312 x 193, and
- Mass (kg incl 20% margin) at 6.6 kg
Meanwhile, NEO is finalising two new space business contracts under the umbrellas of the European Space Agency and European Defence Agency respectively.
HySpex hyperspectral imagers are designed for all situations – in lab and industrial settings, in the field, as well as manned and unmanned airborne vehicles. They promise the most cost-effective result per pixel in applications such as industrial sorting, laboratory analysis, clinical diagnosis and agricultural monitoring.
