Technical English: Laser
LASER
In the «War of Worlds» written before the turn of the last century H. Wells told a fantastic story of how Martians almost invaded our Earth. Their weapon was a mysterious «sword of heat». Today Wells’ sword of heat has come to reality in the laser. The name stands for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.
Laser, one of the most sophisticated inventions of man, produces an intensive beam of light of a very pure single colour. It represents the fulfilment of one of the mankind’s oldest dreams of technology to provide a light beam intensive enough to vaporize the hardest and most heat-resistant materials. It can indeed make lead run like water, or, when focused, it can vaporize any substance on the earth. There is no material unamenable to laser treatment and laser will become one of the main technological tools quite soon.
The applications of laser in industry and science are so many and so varied as to suggest magic. Scientists in many countries are working at a very interesting problem: combining the two big technological discoveries of the second half of the 20th century – laser and thermonuclear reaction – to produce a practically limitless source of energy. Physicists of this country have developed large laser installations to conduct physical experiments in heating thermonuclear fuel with laser beams. There also exists an idea to use laser for solving the problem of controlled thermonuclear reaction. The laser beam must heat the fuel to the required temperature so quickly that the plasma does not have time to disintegrate. According to current estimates, the duration of the pulse has to be approximately a billionth of a second. The light capacity of this pulse would be dozens of times greater than the capacity of all the world’s power plants. To meet such demands in practice, scientists and engineers must work hard as it is clear that a lot of difficulties are to be encountered on route.
The laser’s most important potential may be its use in communications. The intensity of a laser can be rapidly changed to encode very complex signals. In principle, one laser beam, vibrating a billion times faster than ordinary radio waves, could carry the radio, TV and telephone messages of the world simultaneously. In just a fraction of a second, for example, one laser beam could transmit the entire text of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Besides, there are projects to use lasers for long distance communication and for transmission of energy to space stations, to the surface of the Moon or to planets in the Solar system. Projects have also been suggested to place lasers aboard Earth satellites nearer to the Sun in order to transform the solar radiation into laser beams, with this transformed energy subsequently transmitted to the Earth or to other space bodies. These projects have not yet been put into effect, because of the great technological difficulties to be overcome and, therefore, the great cost involved. But there is no doubt that in time these projects will be realized and the laser beam will begin operating in outer space as well.
In the last decade there was outstanding progress in the development of laser technology and its application in science, industry and commerce. Laser cutting, welding and machining are beginning to be big business. The market for laser systems represents around 2.5 % of the world machine tool market.
Which country is the biggest producer and consumer of lasers? Why, Japan, naturally: Japan produced 46 % of world's lasers in 1989, while figures for Europe and the USA are 32 % and 22 %. Japan is building 1,200 to 2,000 CO2 lasers per year of which some 95 % are over 500 W power and 80 % of them are used for cutting operations.
Europe is the second largest user and the third largest producer. In 1990 Europe's market for lasers was $128 million, of which Germany consumed about $51 million, and Italy – $12 million.
The Germany met 90 % of its demands through domestic producers. Growth rate of the European market is estimated at 10 to 15 % per year.
In the future the main trend influencing the industry will be laser source prices. The prices are dropping. There appear lasers of modular construction. The complexity of laser machines is rising. Multi-axes systems are in more use now. Recently a 7-axis CNC laser machining center has been introduced.
In addition to X,Y and Z axes, there are two rotary axes, A and C, and two more linear axes, U and V, to give a trepanning (прорезать большие отверстия) motion to the laser.