Lasers & Sources

SPI Lasers becomes a member of TWI, The Welding Institute

Jan. 18, 2017

Fiber laser manufacturer SPI Lasers has joined The Welding Institute as an industrial member.

Fiber laser manufacturer SPI Lasers (Southampton, England) has joined The Welding Institute (TW; Cambridge, England; http://www.twi-global.com) as an industrial member to support its activity in the development and promotion of fiber lasers for industrial welding applications. SPI says it is one of the world’s leading suppliers of pulsed and high power CW fiber lasers, while TWI says it is one of the world’s foremost independent research and technology organizations for joining technologies. Working together will help SPI build on its welding expertise to support its growing customer base.

One aspect of the relationship will center on the development of SPI’s nanosecond pulsed welding process that TWI will evaluate and add to its portfolio of joining processes (a feature article in the March/April issue of Industrial Laser Solutions will describe this laser welding process in detail). A G4 100 W nanosecond pulsed fiber laser has been installed at TWI that will be capable of marking, engraving, cutting, and surface engineering applications as well as nanosecond welding. This will be available to TWI’s industrial membership for application development and project work.

The companies say that combining 70 years of TWI's global welding and joining experience with the innovative fiber laser technology and commitment to research and development of SPI will insure that SPI continues to deliver market-leading levels of customer service.

"Access to TWI's joining expertise will greatly enhance our ability to develop new laser sources to tackle the challenging joining requirements of today's industrial applications," said Jack Gabzdyl, VP Pulsed Laser Business Line at SPI Lasers. From TWI's perspective, Jon Blackburn said, "We are very pleased to welcome SPI Lasers to our industrial membership and are excited by the prospect of working with the new ns pulsed lasers which have already demonstrated the capability of meeting our members' needs across a broad range of applications."

SPI Lasers, a wholly owned subsidiary of the TRUMPF Group, designs and manufactures fiber lasers for use in materials processing applications in a wide range of industries. SPI Lasers has been operating since 2000 and has R&D and manufacturing in the United Kingdom, with additional sales and customer support locations in Asia and North America.

SOURCE: SPI Lasers; http://www.spilasers.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/SPI-becomes-a-member-of-TWI-FINAL.pdf

About the Author

Gail Overton | Senior Editor (2004-2020)

Gail has more than 30 years of engineering, marketing, product management, and editorial experience in the photonics and optical communications industry. Before joining the staff at Laser Focus World in 2004, she held many product management and product marketing roles in the fiber-optics industry, most notably at Hughes (El Segundo, CA), GTE Labs (Waltham, MA), Corning (Corning, NY), Photon Kinetics (Beaverton, OR), and Newport Corporation (Irvine, CA). During her marketing career, Gail published articles in WDM Solutions and Sensors magazine and traveled internationally to conduct product and sales training. Gail received her BS degree in physics, with an emphasis in optics, from San Diego State University in San Diego, CA in May 1986.