Applied Laser Tooling

The invention of the Laser, 25 years ago, has become an innovation with established industrial technology extended through diverse areas of economic viability (a 25% sales annual growth), and promising market perspectives. In organizing an European Intensive Course on Applied Laser Tooling, it seemed opportune to bring together an international group of scientists to provide an appraisal of industrial Lasers, system integration, and sensitive areas of Laser beam material interaction, while emphasizing those areas which promise to have major impact both in science and technology. Tutorial papers and reports on latest developments both in research and industrial manufacturing were complemented by video and film projections to show the wide variety of applications in industry, stressing the combination of Lasers with other technologies, mainly CNC and Robots. The large participation by the industry fulfilled the intended interaction and cross-fertilization between the scientific, technological and industrial community, reinforcing the innovative capacity readily demonstrated at panel discussions. It was neither possible nor planned to cover all the aspects in full depth. Efforts were addressed to selected areas where discussion of advanced knowled~e and technology topics would stimulate further progress of Laser tooling (in main directions: software, hardware and peopleware). Laser tooling was then discussed in light of its major applications covering Laser beam robotic manipulation towards flexible manufacturing systems. The following articles give a fair account of the course programme.