The Association for Manufacturing Technology of McLean, Va., has launched its Web-based benchmarking survey of order data from North American industrial laser producers and suppliers. Covering companies that deal in complete industrial laser machines as well as those that focus on workstations or sources alone, the survey reports that orders for industrial laser equipment and systems from the 31 participating companies totaled $123.3 million in the first quarter of 2007. Laser products with a value of approximately $32.1 million were exported during the same period. According to the report, 2-D cutting applications were the largest field of industrial laser activity, making up 67.7 percent of all orders placed. CO₂ laser orders accounted for 78.4 percent of the total, and 84.3 percent of orders were for systems comprising both laser sources and workstations.